Strange as it may sound, one of the greatest difficulties in dealing with that community of sinners known as "the Ring" lies in the fact that the judges, magistrates and prosecuting attorneys are comparatively uninterested in the vicciosity of the drug traffic and concerning the strangle-hold it has gained on the country.

Not long ago, a Canadian magistrate imposed a fine of a thousand dollars on a drug pedlar. The pedlar appealed the case. The learned trial judge asked the crown prosecutor why the fine was so high. The prosecutor didn't know. The fine was then reduced to two hundred dollars which is less than half of what the tan-visaged gentleman from the Flowery Kingdom would have made from the sale of opium at one "hop" party where the usual fee for white smokers is ten dollars apiece.

In this particular case, there was no doubt whatsoever that the position taken by the trial judge and the prosecuting attorney were taken in which they believed to be in the best interests of justice, for both are men of absolutely unimpeachable integrity.

A Typical Group of Drug Addicts 1.—A victim of mixed addiction.—Chapter 26, Part II. 2.—An addict, or Junker.—Chapter 21, Part II. 3.—"The patient presents a picture of a poorly developed, poorly nourished individual with a cold, clammy skin."—Chapter 19, Part II. 4.—"As one looks upon these wrecks of humanity, one is fearful for the future of the race."—Chapter 20, Part II. 5.—"When owing to an insufficient will-power on the part of the patient, the personal appeal has failed."—Chapter 28, Part II. 6.—"Students 'cramming' for an examination will take cocaine until, ultimately, cocaine takes them."—Chapter VIII, Part I.

The case is cited merely to show the need of instructing the public concerning the ring and its agents, and as to why the Dominion Government allows a magistrate to penalize a pedlar for a fine one thousand dollars and costs or to imprisonment for any term no exceeding one year, or to both fine and imprisonment. It would also show the public why these penalties, rigorous as they are, must be considered as entirely inadequate in dealing with the Ring.

Elsewhere, we have said that politics might have something to do with the difficulty in securing convictions against Chinamen. From the report of the State Board of Pharmacy, California, one is amazed to find that the Ring has secured such power that even those intrusted with the dispensing of justice, are regularly employed by Chinese companies to act as their attorneys.

The report reads as follows:—"In some localities it has been found that the district attorney, and sometimes the police, judge or justice, is regularly employed by the Chinese companies to act as their attorney. These facts only come to the Board's attention after the prosecutions are begun, when it is found that these cases are not being brought to trial as promptly as they should, or that some unknown influence is being brought to bear making convictions difficult to secure. If the Board did not employ special counsel it would be utterly impossible in such cases to make any headway at all. It, therefore, becomes necessary for the Board, inspectors and attorney to devote more time and attention to such cases in order to prevent continuous postponements, and it is sometimes necessary for the Board to have cases transferred to another township owing to the attitude of the Justice."

This is a matter which should be closely watched in that it might occur in any town or city.

The State Board of Pharmacy has somewhat to say of the police also while setting forth the difficulties encountered in prosecuting. The paragraph reads, "In certain localities it has been found upon investigation that the police department could not be taken into the confidence of the Board to handle its work. The Board was therefore compelled to transact such business with the sheriff of the county; however we are please to inform you that, in but one instance, has it developed that neither the police nor the sheriff's department could be trusted to handle this work… In the larger cities, the Board has always had the assistance and co-operation of the United States customs and internal revenue departments whenever unstamped opium was found. After the Board had prosecuted the person in whose possession it was found, the Federal authorities would then prosecute further such a case."

In England, the illicit use of narcotics is prosecuted under the "Dangerous Drug Act," assented to in 1920. It has supplementary regulation but does not differ materially from the Acts in force in Canada and the United States, except in clause 14, which provides that "any constable may arrest without warrant any person who has committed, or attempted to commit, or is reasonably suspected by the constable of having committed or attempted to commit an offence against this Act, if he has reasonable grounds for believing that this person will abscond unless arrested, or if the name and address of that person are unknown to and cannot be ascertained by him."

The value of such a provision can hardly be overestimated and if adopted on this continent should do much to prohibit peddling.

On the other hand, in the administration of this Act, the police work under a great handicap in that no conviction can take place unless a forbidden drug is found actually on the person of the arrested man or woman. As a result, there are places of assignation where the habituates go for their supply of soporific drugs, and where there is a system of warning signals when unknown or unauthorized persons seek to gain admittance.

There are hundreds of these places in London, some in the finest areas in the West End; others around Shaftesbury Avenue, or in the squalid districts about Tottenham Court Road. These may be night clubs, cafŽs, hair-dressing parlors, or dancing dens.

The Hindus, Lascars, Chinese, and Japanese who live in the East End of London conduct similar places of resort presumably as restaurants, manicuring establishments, shops for the sale of lingerie, cigarettes, or for toilet requisites.

It was discovered recently that a favorite point for meeting of vendors and addicts was at the statue of Nurse Edith Cavell in St. Martin's Lane, near Trafalgar Square.

The London Evening News, discussing the matter, says that there is no doubt of the existence of some powerful organization or ring which not only outwits the police and Customs officials, but has complete control over its agents. A Hindu who refused to say where he had obtained the drug found on him declared, "It is more than my life is worth to say where I got the stuff." In no single instance have the London police been able to learn the source of supply from any suspected or convicted person.

In a report of the committee appointed by the Secretary of State in England to consider outstanding objections to the draft of the Dangerous Drugs Act, it is stated that over thirty million prescriptions for narcotics are given annually. As the population of England and Wales is 37,609,600, it can readily be seen that as compared with the United States, their consumption is very much greater. The population of America is approximately 107 millions and their estimated prescriptions for last year totalled less than twenty millions. We are, of course, presuming that equal amounts are prescribed in both countries.

In England, however, one deduces from the comparative dearth of cases in the police courts, that drug pedlary has not reached the proportions of the business on this continent, the bulk of sales being through the chemists.

This is probably the reason, too, that the pedlars have no "corner" on drugs, for while an opium smoke in England costs two shillings, in Canada it may cost ten dollars, or twenty times the amount.

A friend of mine who is a social worker in the East End of London has, in a letter, given me information concerning the "Chinatown" which is located in that district. Her letter reads:—

"Chinatown consists mainly of two thoroughfares named Limehouse Causeway and Pennyfields, Limehouse, wherein, a number of Chinese citizens have resided since 1910. Previous to that year there were only a few who had permanent residences, which were situated in Limehouse Causeway.

"Prior to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 no law existed in England prohibiting opium traffic. Shortly after the War commenced it was made a serious offence under the Defence of the Realm Regulations to smoke, or for persons to have in their possession, opium without authority, also for any person to possess opium smoking utensils. In 1921 these Regulations were abolished and in place of the Regulation prohibiting this traffic, the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1921, which has similar provisions was passed.

"Opium smoking pertains in this District practically only among the Chinese, although two or three cases have come to light in which English women have indulged in the vice. It will be remembered that the well known actress Billy Carleton, who died mysteriously in 1920, and upon whom an inquest was held, indulged in opium smoking at a West End flat, and that the opium and utensils were supplied by Ada Low Ping You, the British-born wife of a Chinaman residing in Limehouse Causeway. For this offence Mrs. Low Ping You was convicted and sent to prison, and her husband was subsequently deported for trafficking in opium.

"The opium which is used by these unauthorized persons is smuggled into this country by Chinese seamen. The subterfuges they adopt to effect their purpose are very ingenious. In some cases Chinese seamen have been known to make temporary bootsocks of raw opium, others conceal it under their armpits, in their clothing, etc. By these methods they try to evade detection by H.M. Customs Officers and, if successful, they find a good and ready market amongst the Chinese residents.

"The raw opium is then boiled in a copper saucepan, allowed to get cool, and when it sets it is prepared in small pills for internal application, and in packets for smoking. The pills have an effect similar to that of smoking. The drug is then surreptitiously sold and used in the East and West ends of London. The inveterate opium smoker can usually be detected by his extraordinarily sallow complexion, dreamy appearance and want of vitality.

"Opium smoking dens are usually arranged in upper rooms of the houses. The windows of such places are invariably covered in such a way as to prevent the fumes escaping into the street, obviously for the purpose of avoiding detection. These rooms are fitted out either with wide wooden shelves or beds upon which recline those desirous of taking an opium smoke. These smokes vary in price from 2/- to 5/- according to the value of the drug and the financial position of those desiring to indulge.

"When the Defence of the Realm Act came into operation prohibiting opium smoking, etc., a number of these dens existed in 'Chinatown.' From this time until 1920 many prosecutions took place at the Thames Police Court and the offenders were fined, and in some cases imprisonment was imposed, but this did not deter the Chinamen a great deal, as when a fine was inflicted, it was at once paid and the 'Chink' continued his vice. In 1920 the police were very considerably aided by one of the Thames Police Court Magistrates to rid the District of this traffic, by recommending the chief offenders for deportation. This has had a wonderful effect, and opium smoking in 'Chinatown' to-day is almost non-existent, although it will never be entirely abolished as long as Chinese are resident in this country.

"No other rug traffic prevails in Chinatown."

Apparently, the English people are not alive to the drug menace as we are on this continent and it is only when some actress or noted person takes an overdose, either by accident or misadventure, that public comment is made. Visitors to England and returned soldiers allege, however, the habit is making prodigious headway, especially among the denizens of the underworld, and that little or no difficulty is encountered in getting supplies of narcotics to be used there, or smuggled abroad.

The report of the special committee appointed by the Treasurer of the Revenue Department of the United States, goes to show that the greater number of addicts are American born. "It is a rare occurrence" the report claims, "to find an addict among the immigrants on their arrival in this country, although some of them become addicted to the use of these drugs after taking up their abode in this country. Of course, this statement does not apply to the Chinese and certain other nationalities of the Orient."

It must be borne in mind that the profligate denizens of the underworld, in the large European cities, do not migrate to a country where they will be expected to perform hard manual labor, and where narcotics are vastly more expensive. This may explain somewhat for their comparative scarceness, although there is no doubt whatever that no such addiction exists in Europe as in America.

We have already shown that compared with the seventy-two grains of narcotics per capita used in America, the Austrian uses less than one grain, the Italian one, the German two, the Portuguese two-and-a-half, the Frenchman three, and the Hollander three-and-a-half.

While this comparison relates to narcotics generally, an American authority on the subject gives the following figures on the opium alone consumed per capita in the United States. "From 13 to 72 per cent. more opium is consumed per capita" he says, "in the United States than is used in Europe, according to Federal statistics. This is something for the country to ponder over. It is an astonishing fact.

"Statistics show that Germany and France each use 17,000 pounds of opium annually; Italy 6,000 pounds; Australia 3,000 pounds; Portugal 2,000 pounds and the United States the alarming and shameful total of 470,000 pounds annually.

"In fact since these statistics were compiled, the total consumption of opium in this country has increased to more than 500,000 pounds … This does not include the large amount smuggled into this country every year."

When we consider that a great portion of our drugs are manufactured in Europe and sent hither, the comparison becomes astounding, and must raise disquieting questions in the minds of the most indifferent of our people.

Why should the comity of nations known as the Anglo-Saxons become drug fiends, while the Europeans remain sober? Can we cope with the situation or has it grown beyond our reach?

The answer to the former question can probably be determined by studying the European condition; the answer to the second by studying our own.

Dr. Hamilton says that drug addiction is peculiarly an American habit and largely attributable to our strenuous life with its concentrated activity throughout the day, and late hours at night with consequent loss of sleep.

One who is an addict, himself, declares that the people of this continent are the most curious in the world: the direct lineal descendants of Eve. They want to taste and live—or taste and die. While still in their 'teens, they have exhausted all the "thrills" the world can afford, and seek if happily—or unhappily—they may find others within the spell and counter-spell of "the drug."

While doubtless, these statements were true, still they would be equally applicable to the young Frenchman as compared with the young American, and if we are to find the actual solution we must go further afield than New York or Montreal, and dig deeper. Looking to the solution and cure of drug addiction, this phase of the matter is one that should engage the immediate and unremitting attention not only of our physicians, psychiatrists and philanthropists, but of the officials at Ottawa, Washington and London.

It is often said that you cannot believe an addict on oath. While the word of an addict should not outweigh the obvious trend of evidence in the case, as a general thing, he does not differ materially from other prisoners who come before the courts—hat is to say, he tells the truth when it suits him. If he has been convicted and is looking for leniency, he will tell all he knows concerning the trade.

Where a white addict falls into the clutches of the law and wants his daily bolus, there is no such thing as secrecy. We use the words "white addict" with advisement, for a Chinaman is seldom talkative. Even to his counsel, unless perfectly sure of him, the Chinaman's heart is a fountain sealed.

In the statement of Betty M——, here following the charges concerning the pedlars were found to be true, we having taken the trouble to verify them. All the members of the Ring were known to the Federal Department of Health, and one of these was arrested a fortnight later with several thousand dollars' worth of drugs in his possession.

The Department also had knowledge of the operations of the Winnipeg physician who supplied Betty with the habit-forming drugs, and took the necessary steps to stay his headlong trade of wickedness.

It can been seen from this story that Winnipeg has no monopoly of the medical dopeseller, the pest being a widely spread one. The average well-conducted physician, whether British or American must, indeed, feel it bad enough to belong to the same species as such, but almost unbearable to belong to the same profession.

Betty had borne a son to the Chinaman of this story, and the child had been sent to the Orient for education. If one has imagination, there are long thoughts to be worked out concerning this white child who was sent to its yellow grandparents in China.

The girl, in quick-fingered fashion, had taken some wearing apparel from a down-town flat, and while the detectives were searching for her, word was telephoned to the police station that a girl had taken an overdose of morphine in a drug store and was in a state of collapse. The girl was Betty.

After her trial and conviction, she earnestly desired to make a statement to me and was permitted so to do. She was sentenced to a month in jail, but it was arranged that, after serving this term, she should spend three moths with the Sisters of Charity, until some steps could be taken looking to her rehabilitation. We had hoped she would break the connection with the Chinaman, but to this proposal she stubbornly refused.

Later, Betty ran away from the convent, but was arrested at Calgary and served another term of six weeks in prison.

When released therefrom, she found that Tai You, her lover, had disappeared and so, hoping to find him, left at once for British Columbia. It has been rumored that her search for him is in vain, Tai having returned to China.

When he first became acquainted with Betty, this young Chinaman was comparatively rich, but at the time I came to know him she had dissipated his wealth to such an extent that he was almost bankrupt.

As he strove to control the girl's irritability and cowering agitation, while arranging her bail at the police station, he was noticeably a strong intelligent man, and one with a wide patience.

One becomes especially disquieted—almost terrified—in face of these things, for it sometimes seems as if the white race lacks both the physical and moral stamina to protect itself, and that maybe the black and yellow races may yet obtain the ascendancy.

Indeed, this seems possible—even probable—unless the enslavement which comes from these abhorrent and debasing narcotics can be strongly and speedily dealt with. And yet, the ignorance concerning the scope and nature of the menace is known and recognized by only a few of our people.

The people of the Orient have, however, learned this bitter lesson and it was Chum, once the Viceroy of Canton, who said "The opium eater is one of the dead not yet buried."

The taking of opium or morphine by a white man is the synonym of ruin. It leaves him without even the rudiments of a soul, and physically a derelict. In the story The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows, Kipling makes the white man tell of its effects like this:

"Nothing grows on you so much, if you're white, as the black smoke. A yellow man is made different. Opium doesn't tell on him scarcely at all, but white and black suffer a good deal. Of course, there are some people that the Smoke doesn't touch any more than tobacco would at first. They just doze a bit, as one would fall asleep naturally, and next morning they are almost fit for work. Now I was one of that sort when I began, but I've been at it for five years pretty steadily, and it's different now. ... The Black Smoke does not allow of much other business, and even though I am very little affected by it, as men go, I couldn't do a day's work now to save my life."

Omitting the form of affidavit, the following is the statement of Elizabeth M—— (Betty Tai You), made before me on January 13th, 1921:

"By the Court.

(Q).	Your name?
(A).	Betty Tai You.
(Q).	Where do you reside?
(A).	On M—— Avenue with Tai You, a Chinaman. I have lived with him for five years. He was educated for a school teacher as is good to me.
(Q).	Are you married to him?
(A).	No, but we have a little boy four years old. Tai sent him to China to be educated. I want to marry Tai, but he says I have to give up using drugs.
(Q).	Then Tai does not use drugs?
(A).	No! he gets angry with me and breaks my hypo, and burns my drugs, but sometimes when I am very bad, he gives me money to buy more. We used to live in a block, but I cried and made a fuss when I could not get enough "M" or "C", so we moved to a house where no one would hear me.
	When I get a craving I make a noise. That is why I smashed the door of the police station on the South Side. I had a craving and was "goofey."
(Q).	Does Tai buy the drugs for you from his friends?
(A).	The worst place here for dope is the Chinese ——. W—— is the head of it. I won't tell on the Chinamen; they are all good to me. They are nearly all Tai's cousins.
	There is a man here who hides it in a bed that folds into the wall. He is at the X—— Hotel on the second floor. His girl is with him now. She smokes "hop." I don't know her name. She looks like a French girl and has long skinny arms and legs.
(Q).	Where do your people live?
(A).	I have a sister in Winnipeg. She is a nurse in a hospital. My father is dead. Mother lives in Minneapolis.
(Q).	Tell me Betty, how you first came to use drugs?
(A).	I had a nervous breakdown when I was fifteen and Dr. O. O—— of the —— Hospital broke me into drugs. He is a specialist in women's diseases. I was in bed for three months and I got four pills a day. I couldn't tell you to this day what they were; whether one-quarter grain, or one-eighth grain, because I didn't know anything about it.
(Q).	How did you come to Canada?
(A).	I came myself. I did some clerical work in Brandon for awhile. I had been going to the High School in Minneapolis. I was sick in Brandon and went to my sister in Winnipeg.
(Q).	What did you do in Winnipeg?
(A).	I went to see Dr. Z——.
(Q).	And what did he say to you?
(A).	He asked me what kind of pills I was taking: how big they were and if they were white pills? And I had the box that I had got them from the drug store in, and I showed it to him, and he said "Do you know what is the matter with you?
	I said, "No, I don't."
	He said "You have a habit for morphine.
	He asked me how many I had been taking a day, and I could not tell what amount they were, but I took four pills.
(Q).	What happened then Betty?
(A).	Then Dr. Z—— continued giving me these pills. He would write prescriptions five or six grains at a time and when I was done with them I could get more.
(Q).	How long would five or six grains last you?
(A).	I wasn't bad on it like I am now. It would probably do me two or three days.
(Q).	How long were you with Dr. Z—— of Winnipeg?
(A).	For about a month or five weeks until I was acquainted there; and then, through going to his office, I met some other people that he had been writing prescriptions for drugs. You meet lots of people going in and out of the city, peddling these drugs all over Canada. They buy in big quantities. After that I stopped going to Dr. Z—— and I was able to get it like that.
(Q).	Do you remember the people you used to meet at his office? What were their names?
(A).	Yes! There was one little fellow, Gus B——, and Sam W——, but they are both dead now. And Marie G——, and Babe N—— and her husband Charlie N—— and Barney H——. They all got prescriptions there, and Gladys M—— and Marie J——.
(Q).	Is that Gladys M—— who jumped in the river here?
(A).	It might be. She has been in trouble lots of times. Marie, a little dark girl who looks like a half-breed, used to go around with her.
(Q).	They all got prescriptions from Dr. Z——?
(Q).	Yes, until they found they could get it cheaper from the pedlars. The pedlars would buy in big amounts; would bring it to Winnipeg and then would dish it out in small packages. We would call these "decks," but some people call them "bindles."
(Q).	Where would the pedlars get it?
(A).	I don't know. Montreal, I believe they go for it. They used to bring it back by the trunkful.
(Q).	From Montreal?
(A).	Yes, and from across the Line for awhile, but that was put a stop to. They used to get cocaine and wrap it in packages and the girls would go and sell it in the United States.
(Q).	Did you ever sell any?
(A).	No. They used to make a little vest, tight to their skin, all little pockets, just big enough for a package to go in, and then put the packages in them, so if they got searched at the Border or anything, they wouldn't bother them.
(Q).	Who supplied the girls with money to buy the drugs?
(A).	The fellows they were with. It doesn't cost so much to buy it in big quantities, and they didn't sell it straight. They mixed flour, and sugar of milk and boracic acid, and things like that with it. Cocaine you can buy for forty-five dollars an ounce.
(Q).	Where do you buy it at that price?
(A).	They buy it all over. I couldn't buy it myself, but I know what they paid for it.
(Q).	Do you know the names of those men who are supplying money to the girls?
(A).	Well, I have given them.
(Q).	Those are the men who are supplying the money?
(A).	Yes. They make one ounce of cocaine into 155 packages, but sometimes they make 200 packages, and sell it for a dollar a package.
(Q).	Where did you go when you left Winnipeg?
(A).	I came up here with Tai You.
(Q).	And Tai has been pretty good to you?
(A).	He has been awfully good to me. So many people have ideas that the Chinese are all uneducated and stupid like those in laundries.
(Q).	Where did you live when you came to Edmonton?
(A).	I stopped at the —— Hotel till I went to the hospital. That was when I got the boracic acid and the cocaine mixed. I was pretty sick.
(Q).	Where were you buying your drugs in Edmonton?
(A).	From W.B. in the —— Café. He is a little skinny fellow, thin, yellow faced. He smokes opium. That is the headquarters for it here. They hide it in the coal. "Winnipeg Slim" sells morphine for $60.00 an ounce. He stays at the R—— Rooms when here. He was here two weeks ago, but went to Saskatoon, but said he was coming back again.
(Q).	Where did you get your drugs next?
(A).	From Dr. X.Y. in the N-- Block. He used to give me from 92 to 100 grains of morphine a week.
(Q).	How many grains did you get each day?
(A).	I usually got 13 grains. I got the prescriptions filled at the —— Drug Store.
(Q).	Did you get this amount on one prescription?
(A).	No, I would go back two or three times a day. Sometimes, he was away and I could not get him. Often, I would write them myself and he would sign his name.
(Q).	He would give you the pad?
(A).	I would get his pad and pen and write it out and he would sign his name. Sometimes he pretended he would not give me any morphine, but he was only trying "to keep face." He always gave it to me in the end, but I have had to get on my knees first. Tai's cousins like to "keep face" with me too, but that was because Tai told them to Siwash me.
(Q).	What does it mean to "Siwash" you?
(A).	The Siwashes are Indians in British Columbia. They can't get whiskey because they are Indians.
(Q).	Oh! I see, Lassie, Tai inhibited you.
(A).	I don't know, only I had to coax hard sometimes to get the stuff.
(Q).	How much did the doctor charge you for each prescription?
(A).	$2.00.
(Q).	Your name?
(Q).	Then you would pay him $6.00 a day?
(A).	Yes, and it cost me seventy-five cents for the tube of morphine. They were six and a quarter grains in one tube. They were quarter-grain tablets. The prescriptions and vials of morphine cost me $8.25 per day.
(Q).	Where did you get the money?
(A).	My jewellery that Tai gave me; I pawned every bit of it. I had diamond rings, a cameo ring, an American gold-piece ring, brooches, ten karat chain and lockets. They are all gone.
(Q).	Did Dr. X.Y. know this?
(A).	I mentioned it to him two or three times, that I was short and would have to pawn my ring, and he just took it as a joke.
(Q).	Did he ever take any of them for payment?
(A).	No.
(Q).	He was hard on you, was he?
(A).	His heart never softened very much for me. I don't think he ever gave me a pill that I didn't pay for.
(Q).	Did Tai give you any money?
(A).	Yes, Tai helped me a lot.
(Q).	Are you still going to Dr. X.Y.?
(A).	No. He left town for some company work. Then I started to use hyoscine and codein to break off from the morphine. I used to go to Dr. ——'s office. He treated me there, but nothing went out.
(Q).	What did he give you?
(A).	He gave me all the substitutes I asked for.
(Q).	What were these?
(A).	Hyoscine, codein, dionine, digitalis, strychnine, nitro-glycerine and other things which I forget. I couldn't take them out though.
(Q).	Were these drugs to break you off morphine and cocaine?
(A).	Yes.
(Q).	But you had opium pills and cocaine in your possession when you collapsed in --'s drug store? The police matron took these out of your powder puff.
(A).	Yes! I said I was "trying" to break off. I didn't succeed very well and got all I could pay for. If I couldn't afford both, I always bought morphine. Sometimes when I was sick, I got another girl to buy the stuff for me, but I would have to give her half as a kind of payment. I suffer awfully if I have to do without it and want to kill myself.
(Q).	When you take cocaine, what is its particular effect?
(A).	Coke "bugs." I get them under the skin, generally in the back. I do silly things then. That was how I cam to take those things out of Mrs. B——'s flat. I didn't want them at all, but was just "goofey."
(Q).	Do you want to give up these drugs, Betty? Are you willing to be helped by going into an institution?
(A).	I want to get better, Mrs. Murphy, but I just couldn't stand it. I'd like to get better for Tai to marry me.
(Q).	Wouldn't you rather go back to your mother in Minneapolis? I could get you deported as a undesirable alien.
(A).	No! No! I will never leave Tai. Please don't send me back. Please don't. I'll try hard to give up things.
(Q).	Is there anything more you would like to tell me before the matron takes you downstairs?
(A).	I have told you all I can think of. Please do not send me to the States."

Your people should be told, then;

	"Here is one
	Who would corrupt the rose of Lesbian yon;
	Who leaves a blight upon our homes."

—Arthur Stringer.

"Cocaine," says Abraham C. Webber, "is the most virulent of the habit-forming drugs. It makes maniacs and criminals. Outrages on women in certain sections of America are directly traceable to excessive use of cocaine. … It produces in criminals the most unusual forms of violence and abnormal crime. In resisting arrest, a cocainist will not hesitate to murder."

Cocaine was introduced to America about thirty-five years ago, its anaesthetic properties being discovered by Keller, but its danger to the public was not made known until several years later when it became a habit through the medium of "catarrh cures."

Laws were enacted in the different State legislatures providing safeguards for its use, and penalties for its abuse.

At the present time, the annual consumption in the United States of coca leaves, from which cocaine is obtained, amounts to over a million pounds. This amount produces approximately 150,000 ounces, which has been computed as sufficient to furnish every man, woman and child with 2 1/2 doses. Seventy-five per cent. of the cocaine manufactured is used for illicit purposes. These figures do not include the quantity smuggled into the country. Of later years, cocaine has been considered a luxury to be indulged in at "snow" or "coke parties." The effects of these orgies on the participants are various, but always deplorable, making for perverted senses and the enfeeblement of the will. Cocaine ultimately vitiates all the relations of life.

An addict once told me that in attending a party, he finds after "hitting the snow" he is filled with a sense of super-optimism.

"Ah! how can I explain it to you?" he asked. "The first effect is thrilling and accelerating. The mind is quickened. Everything roseate. Summer is always here. I am never poor. In this mood, I am impelled to make wagers freely and to wag a very intemperate tongue. I was at 'a sniffing party' in London, England the night the Lusitania was sunk, and wagered with a fellow £50 to £5 that the United States would declare war in forty-eight hours. Then I offered to lick him to enforce my bet. If I had not been in a state of semi-insanity from the dope, I would have known the wager was an impossible one and would have saved my money. Under the spell, I am always unable to distinguish between congruous and incongruous."

"And how do you feel when the drug has loosened its spell?" I asked, "what is the counter-spell?"

"When the excitant effect has worn away, I feel as though squirrels were walking over my back, or if I am outside, I argue to myself that I am being pelted with rain-drops. My super-optimism is succeeded by a corresponding depression—a feeling of terror and doom. In this state, I have hallucinations and see things or have double-vision. At other times I observe rays coming off different objects. If I stare at a door, presently there is some specific envisionment. The door opens and a head comes in, or perhaps several heads. A white flower in someone's buttonhole may become an angel. Out-of-doors, more than once, I have been chased far down the street by terribly hostile trees."

Another addict related to me how for three days his brain was a phonographic record, the words from which blotted out all other sounds. While indulging heavily in cocaine, he had been listening to men play poker for three days. Their jargon had become so firmly a part of his brain that he could hear almost nothing but such expressions as "Bet you a hundred!" or "What have you got in the hole?"

When his wife spoke to him he would say, "Don't you know you shouldn't speak when people are playing."

"My greatest sufferings," explained this man, "have come from the idea that people have 'got wise' to me. This has caused me to suffer a living hell and has made me feel like killing them."

"How else do you suffer?" I asked, "what are the pangs of a cocaine user?"

"Starvation!" he explains jerkily. "When using 'coke' for several days, I don't eat. No addict does, and so I become weak and thin. I get low in vitality—so low that if you put out your hands and touched me suddenly, I would feel as if bolts of electricity had passed into me. The magnetism of your body would hurt me."

"Tut!" I ejaculate, "this is only a form of delusional insanity. Nearly all cocainists tell me of electrical influences that are hostile."

"This may be so, too," and here he grinned crookedly, "please don't say 'Tut!' so sharply. It feels exactly like the point of a knife to me."

Among the 'teen boys and girls, the story of the party has been told by a gentleman in the State of Washington. "The business starts with the boy," he says, "especially the boy who can get his dad's automobile car and knows how to run it. The dope seller, ever looking for new fields to conquer, will inform the boy if he can get a party of boys in a car, the boy will be enabled to have a lot of fun with them at a 'coke' party. The pedlar will go even farther and will supply the 'shot.' … On the second occasion, the pedlar is there, not to give free dope, but to sell it. The boys of last night become the propagandists of to-day, for, strangely enough, the dope addict immediately develops a mania for recruiting others. When a host is told by his guest that he does not take a drink, the host invariably commends his good sense and pours one for himself. Not so the addict. He thirsts for converts."

Not long ago, in Montreal, a man died from the effect of an overdose of drugs taken at a dope party, which resulted in one of the party being charged with manslaughter.

In the Canadian city in which I live, it has been calculated that several hundred persons attend "snow parties" weekly, or about a half of one percent. of the population. Although the seaport cities have a trebled incidence, these figures may be taken as fairly representative of the party goers. This computation does not, however, include the addicts who are using allied narcotics or who have been confirmed users of cocaine. It would be safe to add another half of one per cent. to cover this number.

Persons who are not posted could hardly credit these statements but officials having intimate information know them to be fairly accurate.

These parties are held in livery stables or garages, in empty box-cars, in opium joints, supper-rooms, or private apartments, attics, cellars or almost any place that can be locked against surprises, and generally result in much foolish conversation and more foolish laughter. Tongues are light as leaves and, for that matter, so are heads. Indeed, and it may be said generally of the participants what Margot Asquith said of a statesman of her day, "Whatever Dilke's native impulses were, no one could ever say he controlled them."

In order that the symptom and habits of cocaine may be known to parents and to others, we would point out that after a large dose, muscular spasms of the face are noticeable and the pupils of the eyes become dilated. A motor restlessness becomes apparent and in this condition the cocainist will walk long distances, realizing this afterwards by his sore muscles and weariness. As the drug tolerance increases, loss of appetite, dyspepsia, insomnia, loss of memory, and inability to concentrate the mind are noticeable symptoms. The end is a state of extreme melancholia or of mania.

Dr. W. H. B. Stoddart, Medical Superintendent of the Bethlehem Royal Hospital, London, says of cocaine users, "In conjunction with a general feeling of depression, the judgment is warped so that the patients get the idea that the hand of every man is against them; they become anxious and fear all manner of impending harm. Especially are wives distrusted and accused of infidelity. The patients are often impulsive and violent; they may wilfully destroy valuable property by reason of some fantastic delusion; they may murderously attack their supposed persecutors or commit suicide to escape them."

Dr. Stoddart says further that, on abstaining from the drug, some patients complain of pains in the limbs, mostly in the joints, and that there may be hallucinations of hearing. "This drug," he says, "is so enslaving that relapse occurs even more frequently than with morphia. Cocaine paranoia is liable to last several months and a few patients become permanently insane."

Cocaine addiction is more easily cured than other forms, and for this reason pedlars prefer to deal with opium or morphine addicts. A cocaine "fan" can go to a hospital or the country and break himself off the drug. An addict who is a man of marked culture and who has tried all kinds of sleep-producing drugs, tells us that a Chinaman will spend ten dollars a day to make an opium addict so as to secure his permanent enslavement.

"I can give up cocaine," he continued, "but when anyone speaks to me of doing so, my body starts to ache and I get 'the needles'—that is to say a mixture of nerves and muscles. There is no great physical re-action though; the habit is a dissipation, or a kind of mental craving. One desires the feeling of optimism or of content it inspires, and to be able to live in the past. I enjoy, too, the feeling of tastes and the seeing of sounds. My senses become confused so that a disagreeable odor may be like a perfume."

"If you can relinquish the habit without excessive suffering, why not do so?" I urge.

"Once I did," he makes answer; "I went to the country where no cocaine was obtainable, and drove a steam-plough for three months. I became strong as a champion, but the tortures attending the drug adjurement were not comparable with those endured in the endless following of the long, long furrows which presented nothing upon which I could turn my thoughts. Increasingly, I became filled with a kind of self-fed fury till, ultimately, I returned to the city and to my wonted indulgence. Some day, to effect a cure, I intend shutting myself up for a week or two with a lot of food and a large bath-tub. I really intend to do it you know."

"Were you not ashamed of returning to addiction disease, once you had become rid of it?" I query further. "How could you do so terrible a thing?"

"Yes! I was ashamed, I felt that I ought to be dead but I wasn't. I could have committed suicide, but, after all, this would not have been important to anyone, not even to myself."

"What did you do then?" I asked. "Having put your hand to the plough and having turned back both literally and metaphorically, to what work did you next turn?"

"Nothing much, I'll admit, nothing but the writing of letters. Nearly all cocaine dopers write long letters, and keep on writing them, especially after an injection. You get 'lit up' then, and your mind becomes unusually alert.

"Several of our most popular writers are cocainists. I can tell it from their fine-spun theories, and from the minute delineation of their characters. These writers work out plots in great detail and with almost superhuman cunning, especially where the plot relates to the detection of crime. Ultimately, such writers become spiritualists.

"No! No!" he replies without my having asked the question, "Cocaine will not put brains into a numskull, but it stimulates the brain. Also, it awakens every evil passion and accentuates it."

"But some of us think spiritualists may have delusions without cocaine," I make comment. "There was that man, who last week shot one of our policemen and now it turns out this man had been attending spiritual seances, and had become imbued with the theory of mediums."

"There may not be any sequence between cocaine and spiritualism," answered the addict, "this may be one of my delusions too, but I am sure a parallel exists in that both are straight on the road to Endor. You know the lines, don't you?

"Oh! the road to Endor is the oldest road
And the craziest road of all,
Straight it runs to the witch's abode,
As it did in the days of Saul,
And nothing has changed the sorrow in store,
For such as go down the road to Endor.'"

"Speaking of detectives and their cunning," continued the addict, "every cocainist is considered a big fellow as he can succeed in 'dousing the stuff.' Ah, Madam, by evading the police we get justice—also drugs.

"A soldier-fellow whom I know boasts that he was in jail for a month and 'lit up' every day. He has some kind of a metal plate in his back over which he wears two chamois pads, these being held in place by buckles and straps. In these pads he carries his supply against emergencies. Yes! that was a wide old chap who said 'Common sense is to seize the inevitable and make use of it.'

"A woman I know keeps a supply in her cellar in the water-tank just beneath the water-line. The bottle is the same color as the water so that if you looked in the tank you would not notice it. This woman gives parties, but she always charges for the stuff; also she is very arrogant and mean to the middle of her bones. Money has been spoken of as a very desirable form of power, but let me tell you here, Madam, that to exercise the power and insolence of a supreme potentate, all one needs is a company of clamorous addicts and a stock of cocaine or morphine."

"Where do you get drugs when you go to a strange city" I ask, "how do you make the connection?"

"Ho, la! being an addict and carrying the signs on my white and very facile face, I can get it almost anywhere. If I have not connected with a drug store, physician or some illicit dealer, I can nearly always secure it in a dance hall or cabaret. Often, I get it from the musician's 'wife', who stands around and waits till her man is through with his part in the orchestra or whatever his turn may be. Usually, what she lacks in morals she makes up in suavity. No one suspects her of peddling, and no one suspects me of purchasing for I c‰che 'the drift' of coke in the finger of my glove or in some equally casual place. It is clumsy to putter around with pockets and purses when you 'make the meet'; the police might get you, although, on the whole, buying dope is really a modest undertaking and not fraught with any more terrors than buying potatoes."

"Then cocainists are not greatly afraid of the police," I remark with a rising inflection that suggests an answer.

"That I can hardly tell you," he replies. "It depends upon the person's mental condition and what the probabilities of detection are. In many places, the police seem absolutely impervious to the traffic; or do not know how to go about the rounding up of either dopers or pedlars."

Perhaps this addict is right in his opinion of us, for in Canada, 70% of the thieves are either undiscovered or acquitted. Most of these thieves are drug addicts who steal again as soon as they are released. The profession of malefactor has become a profitable one in this Dominion, the emoluments being large. The forger, bootlegger, thief, drug pedlar, and white slaver wax fat in the land in spite of our police surveillance. Aye! Aye! it were a fine thing to be King of Canada, and to make these criminals run for their villain lives.

In my opinion, apart from the lack of point, the police methods are much too easeful. The drug traffic will never be destroyed until the police are given more arbitrary powers than at present. Then, too, if there were more men on the morality squads to round up these abandoned dangerous crooks, there would be less need for patrolmen.

Whenever a drug case is being heard, the court is filled with addicts and pedlars, so that even a magistrate may be shocked by the weird look of the "goofey" audience. These occasions would seem to be propitious for snapping the pictures of "runners" and "rats" but, as yet, I have never seen it done. Perhaps, they do so in some cities with the idea of running them down. Let us hope so. When all of us get really into our stride, we shall never overlook a point of vantage in this grim and desperate game.

There is only one way to cure the cocaine evil, and that is for its manufacture to be barred all the world over. It no longer has legitimate use, having been displaced by novocaine, stovaine and other agencies which paralyse and benumb tissues when applied locally. These are less dangerous also, and without the possibility of becoming a habit.

That its manufacture can be barred is shown by a discussion which took place at the Hague Convention of 1912. At this convention the necessity of dealing with the traffic in opium was discussed because it had become "a scourge spreading economic ruin, and moral as well as intellectual degradation."

Great Britain insisted that the study of morphine and cocaine was as important as opium and that the morphine and cocaine evil would increase if only opium was considered. Italy suggested similar study as to hasheesh or Indian hemp. Emphasizing the British position it was learned that "beginning with the suppression of the opium vice in China and other far eastern countries, a determined and calculated effort was made by the manufacturers of morphine and cocaine to introduce these drugs in replacement of opium. Such efforts had largely succeeded, and the world was presented the spectacle of many great Governments willingly sacrificing or providing for the sacrifice of an aggregate annual opium revenue in the neighborhood of one hundred million dollars, only to see the subjects of some of them pressing two other deadly drugs into the hands of those far eastern people who had heroically determined and were bent upon the abandonment of the opium vice."

The Hague Convention thereupon agreed on a general course of action to become operative throughout the world, looking to the regulation of the manufacture and disposition of morphine and cocaine.

Since then, the signatories to this pledge have been enabled to place a limit upon the imports through legitimate channels, even if the underground methods remain, as yet, vastly out of hand.

That the signatories, whether through the Hague Convention or the League of Nations, shall ultimately deal with the suppression of an unnecessary and deadly drug like cocaine, can hardly be doubted, and certainly should not be delayed.

The same applies to all narcotics. International agreement—or maybe we should say, international disarmament—concerning narcotics, seems the only satisfactory solution of this especially disquieting problem.

Much has been said, of late, concerning the entrapping of girls by Chinamen in order to secure their services as pedlars of narcotics. The importance of the subject is one which warrants our closest scrutiny: also, it is one we dare not evade, however painful its consideration.

Personally, we have never known of such a case. It is true, of course, that hundreds of girls are living with Chinamen, and are peddling drugs, but almost invariably the girl has put herself in the way by visiting Chinese chop-suey houses, or other places of business.

Generally speaking, the girl goes to the Chinaman because she has learned the drug habit and wants to get her drugs secretly. At first; she doesn't know what is before her: later she doesn't care.

It is not true, however, that a white girl or woman who is keeping to her own preserves is hunted like game, stalked to windward, and trapped by the Chinaman in order that she may be bent to his criminal purpose, or minister to his libidinous desires.

The following statement taken before me very recently, may seem, at first glance, to be a contradiction of this contention but, subsequently the woman in the case acknowledged that, while in Calgary and Edmonton, she had gone to Chinese restaurants of her own accord and had asked for work. Because of a quarrel with her mother-in-law and her husband, she had fled from the United States to Canada without giving notice of her intention. This is her story:-

"X—— Y——-, being duly warned, states as follows:—

"I came to the City of Edmonton from Calgary on Saturday last. Upon arrival in Edmonton, I stopped at the —— Hotel for three days. I was advised by a Chinaman in Calgary to come to Edmonton to make some money. I do not know his name.

"After leaving the —— Hotel, I went around different rooming houses in the City. On Wednesday, about 8 p.m., a short Chinaman followed me and spoke to me. He asked me to meet him the next day about 8 p.m., and he would take me to a Chinese laundry. I met him at the stated time and he asked me to not walk with him, but to follow him. I followed him to a laundry near some big warehouses. I do not know the street.

"Upon arrival at the laundry, the Chinaman told me to go upstairs. It was dark, and I was afraid. He then told me to go in a room and turn on the light."

The rest of the statement may not be printed but concluded with these words, "Then the detectives came in. They took the name of the Chinamen, and brought me to the Police Station for investigation."

The curious-minded reader will desire to know what happened after her arrest, and so I shall relate the sequel although it is a story without thrills.

We held the woman in the cells for a week, and wired her husband that he was needed in Canada. He turned out to be a railway official of striking presence, even as she was apparently a woman of culture.

"Were they reconciled?" you ask.

It seemed too much to expect, but, actually, they were, so after all, it must be true that "there is a Providence even in the city."

When the man heard what I had to say, and how a good man must perforce be a father to his wife as well as a husband, he thanked me, crossed the room to where she sat in charge of an officer, and led her quietly away.

This is not much of a story, but still it serves to show how a woman went wrong, and how she escaped the consequences of her wrong-doings. Of course, it must remain a problem that such a woman fell in such a way. Maybe, she was suffering from dementia praecox, a form of insanity which affects young persons, and leads them to commit crimes. These youthful dements acquire vicious habits and are unable to resist temptation. But then this may be only our special viewpoint, for the longer we are engaged in judging criminals, the more fully we become persuaded that they are nearly all unbalanced, or at least afflicted with some queer mental slant.

On another occasion, the Mother Superior and one of the Sisters of a Catholic Refuge Home brought to me a girl aged seventeen who had a Chinese lover.

She had been working as a domestic in one of the leading homes in the city, and it was found that Woo Keen, whose morals were as oblique as his eyes, used to call and see her in the mornings before any of the members of the household had come down. There is a Turkish proverb which advises, "Before you love, learn to run through the snow, leaving no footprint." Woo Keen had not observed this proverb and his footprints across the garden plot of unsullied snow, led to his visits being discovered.

There was no charge which could be preferred against either of them but, by special arrangement, the girl was placed at the Refuge Home for protection.

These good women kept her strictly to the grounds of the institution but, presently, they found the Chinaman, Woo Keen, to be on campaign, and that he knew the exact hour when Pearl was free to take air outdoors, and where letters or dainties might be placed with a reasonable certainty of her finding them.

"Did you say her name was Pearl?" I ask of the Mother Superior.

"Yes," she replies, with a slightly perceptible lowering of her eyes, "but I fear Your Worship may fine her to be somewhat lacking in the gracious embodiment her name suggests."

And so it happened, for as I pulled on her mental and moral muscle, it was to find an amazing insensibility which utterly blighted my highest hopes for her retrievement. Also, she had most of the striking indications of a girl who was needlessly healthy.

Being excellently wise, the Sisters had set themselves to learn how the Mongolian, Woo Keen, had become familiar with the little secrets of their Home, such as the hours of rest and recreation. The thing was a puzzle that bade fair to remain unsolved until, in a moment of unwonted candor, another young miss in custody confessed that, at the request of Pearl, she used to leave a stamped letter addressed to the Chinaman on the seat of the street-car when the Sisters took her to the dentist, in the hope that the finder might post it, and the finder always did.

And, now, the Sisters wanted to know how they might save the girl. Like Eve, her primal mother, she had become learned in the law even while she walked in the garden, and knew that the Refuge Home was not "a place of detention," and that no one might restrain her however worthy their intentions.

"I am not going back to Woo" she said to me "I am going back to work."

"Will you work in the country then, or in another city?"

"No, I will work here."

"If you work with Woo, we shall see that he is deported," I threaten.

"Woo is a Canadian citizen and may not be deported," she replies.

In this, she has been perfectly instructed. Woo Keen, should it please his fancy, might laugh in his westernized sleeve and say, "Gee whizza! Police big chumpee. Me Number 1 boy, allight."

And so Pearl went out to "board" with the white woman at whose house she had first met Woo Keen, just as other girls were meeting other Chinamen, and none of us could say them nay.

Pearl will come back to us some day, but it will either be as a prisoner or as one who seeks a place to die. They all come back, and it is foolish to say, "You were warned," or "I told you so." It is better to recall for oneself the words of Sa'di, the Persian sage, "Whoso hath no patience, hath no wisdom."

And once, a mother brought some letters her daughter had received from Ah Pie, a Chinaman, requesting that she call for her washing. He wrote well, framed his sentences correctly, and expressed himself with deference.

The girl was an accountant in a well-known business house, and of such marked probity of character that her mother would not allow her to be even questioned on the matter.

Yet, the happening seemed to require an explanation from the girl in that she never sent her laundry to Ah Pie; that the letters had been addressed at intervals to both her former and latter places of residence, and because she had never shown the epistles to her mother, their discovery being accidental.

The more one studies the subject, especially when all the facts are available, the more one is convinced, that in the marital relations between white women and men of color, the glove is always thrown by the woman, or, at least deliberately dropped.

"What difference does it make?" you ask.

Not a great deal. In any event, the girl becomes an outcast from her people. If not already a drug user, she drifts into the habit, or becomes an agent for the distribution of inhibited drugs. Almost invariably, she becomes another recruit for that army of workers, those desperately hard workers in the non-essential industry known as prostitution.

In any study of the problems presented by the drug traffic, the relation of the girl pedlar to the yellow man is one which cannot be overlooked, and, indeed, it seldom is. Usually, we shift the responsibility for her fall upon the shoulders of the alien where it does not necessarily belong.

Certain journalists, with all sincerity of purpose, have stirred up racial hatred against the Chinamen on this account, and have called them beasts and yellow dogs.

Let us punish these foreign immigrants if they deserve it; let us exclude them from our country if our policy so impels, but let us refrain from making them the eternal scapegoats for the sins of ourselves or of our children. It is not the Saxon way.

If the Chinese introduced opium to this continent, America has paid them back a thousand-fold in very evil coin by teaching them the use of the hypodermic needle, which enables them to use morphine sulphate, the derivative of opium, with comparative convenience, and with much less chance of detection. This instrument also enables them to absorb the drug more readily into their system, and without its peculiar distastefulness.

Morphine is very bitter, even more bitter than the proverbial gall and can hardly be used by the mouth, for which reason the needle is almost a necessity.

Other drug users who cannot afford to purchase the drug in tablet form use the ash called Yen shee which is the residue of smoked opium. When water is added and the solution strained, it is then "shot" into the arm in order that the habituŽs may maintain "a hold over" or "keep on the drug."

If the habitué is even ordinarily cautious he strains the solution through filter paper or through cotton-batting before using it. This cotton-batting is carefully hoarded against the rainy day when no money is available for the purchase of Yen shee. It is then boiled and used for a shot.

The solution is known in the underworld as "Yen shee medicine," and enables an eight-grain morphinist to reduce to about three grains and still be conscious of "thrill" or "rear" in the daily dose. Its use, however, is almost certain to cause painful abscesses and for this reason it is only used by the poorer addicts. A close-up sight of the punctures or branding marks of the needle is shocking to one who has never seen the body of an addict. It has been claimed, and it is quite true, that dope "guns" are more destructive to the world than heavy artillery.

For the uninitiated, it is well to explain more fully that morphine sulphate is prepared in both tablet and powder form, being soluble in warm water. The addict, or "prodder," usually melts the tablet in a teaspoonful of water over gas, a lamp, or a candle and draws the warm solution into "the gun." He then inserts the needle in his arm or shoulder and presses hard on the plunger. The fire-blackened spoon which is used for "cooking the shot" is found in the room of nearly all addicts.

Instead of the syringe, the prodder or "rat" sometimes uses a safety-pin to make the hole in his arm and an eye-dropped to insert the solution. These "pin shots" are frequently resorted to by the drug slaves of the poorer classes who cannot afford to buy a hypodermic syringe. Or, if they have a syringe, they prefer to spend their money on purchasing drugs rather than replacing the broken needles.

Under the guise of the slow-reduction cure, or the ambulatory treatment, certain physicians usually denominated as "dope doctors," have taught the use of the hypodermic needle to their patients, thus enabling these to operate it personally. It is wonderful how tedious this method may become and how much money the unprofessional ruffian can make out of this method, especially when the patient is well-to-do.

Dr. Osler was right when he said that the hypodermic syringe was too dangerous a weapon to trust even to the hands of a nurse. No patient, under any circumstances, should use it upon himself.

Abraham C. Webber, Assistant District Attorney-General of Suffolk County, who served on a special drug commission, created by the Massachusetts Legislature has said "without the needle drug addiction would never have made much headway in America. The original form of drug dissipation was confined to opium smoking." This distinguished statement leaves nothing unsaid.

It is claimed that at the present time morphine is the most popular of all narcotics, and this seems to be shown by the replies to the thousands of questionnaires sent out by the special committee of investigation appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington in 1918. The replies from the almshouses showed that 111 of the inmates were using gum opium, 157 smoking opium, 3,072 morphine, 900 heroin, 30 codein, 75 laudanum, 123 paregoric and 24 cocaine. Only 30% of the superintendents of the almshouses answered the Government's questions, showing that "Uncle Sam" as well as "Jack Canuck" has also a fair share of half-baked blunderers in the shape of public officials, the type who adopt a superior attitude when asked for information on the drug traffic, or who hide their ignorance of it under either silence or an emphatic denial.

In discussing the above figures with an addict who has used all kinds of drugs, he declares these figures to be misleading. Nearly all morphinists begin as cocainists, and continue to use it. Although the almshouses have registered these addicts as morphinists, a closer examination would prove them to be "mixers."

The effect of morphine, he further claims, is largely physical, while that of cocaine is mental. The latter counteracts the inertia engendered by the former. The cocaine is sometimes injected in a vein, but this practice is dangerous and is said to be only practised by inured addicts. This is what they call "taking it in the heart." Some of these persons do not allow the vein to heal up, but on each occasion, lift the congealed blood sufficiently to again insert the needle.

The addict who discussed these matters with me is a man of position and of marked ability. He does not use morphine for any pleasure it affords, but because he suffers when it is taken away. To use the correct jargon, it has "hooked him."

"Many addicts," he continues, "find a fascination in the hypodermic syringe which is almost inexplicable, and play with it as with a toy. Paradoxical as it sounds, they like to punish themselves with the needle for the pleasure it affords. I think most men like to take a moiety of pains with their pleasure, just as the mountain climber strains his muscles, freezes his face and endangers his life for the 'something' hidden behind the hills."

"But the pain," I argue, "is so terribly out of proportion to the pleasure, its use is stupid. Why lick honey from such ugly thorns?" A lifting of the eyebrows, and a shrug of the shoulders, silence, then this statement—"Ah! I stay with it always—this peaceable remedy of human life."

"It is no remedy," I further insist, "instead of being a surcease from cares, the suicide of morphine addicts has become so common that in some States of the Union it was necessary to amend the section of the Poison Law which related to carbolic acid, this being their favorite poison."

"Yes! Yes!" he replies, "people sometimes get so far as 'a remorse dose,' but I have not reached the stage."

Hypodermic administration leads to other trouble than septic poisoning with its loathsome abscesses. The common use of the needle by several persons sometimes causes communicable diseases to be transmitted.

This common use of the needle is practised in the cabaret and dance hall dressing-rooms, or in those of a theatre. Frequently the woman in charge of the room sells the tablets.

On the other hand, a large quantity of morphine was recently found on the shelves of a rooming house kitchen in one of our Canadian cities. The man in charge of the place was caught with the hypodermic needle in his hands and, according to the police, he was openly taking the drugs in the presence of his wife and children. They also allege that this rooming house was a distributing centre, although camouflaged as the office of a messenger service.

After the arrests were made, the detectives answered several telephone calls asking for narcotics, and instructed 'the friends' to call for their drugs, so that other arrests were made in a few minutes after the callers had handed in their money for the drugs.

In a fashionable residential district of the same Canadian city, a woman and man were arrested, on which occasion the detectives, over the telephone, took the names of twenty-seven well known citizens in the same district who were asking for supplies through this illicit channel.

It is claimed that morphinism is frequent among nurses, doctors and medical students, who have experience with the drug and can obtain it more readily. It happens too, that habituated nurses, in order to indulge themselves with "the stuff" during the night, will accustom a chronic patient to the use of the needle, and so it frequently happens that the unfortunate patient finds himself in slavery to this unsatisfying drug, a thousand-fold more painful than his original disease.

Or the nurse may be merely a sympathetic assuager of pain, a person of compliant disposition, who readily yields to the wishes of the patient, thus allowing him to subside into the debasing indulgence of morphinism, or into its leisurely annihilation.

Several years ago, one of the "prodders" was brought to court charged with having morphine illegally in possession. Her son, a boy coming to manly age, accompanied her under a similar charge. They had a hypodermic syringe between them and both were covered with carbuncles from its use.

The lad was slack jawed, sodden spirited and lacked what physicians describe as "muscular integrity." Also, he was full of tedious words. If we would only give him the drug called morphia, he would be our father, our mother and our brother to the end of the world. He would tell us who were selling drugs. He would go out with the police and be "a pigeon" for them. Surely we couldn't see him die just for one "shot," surely—."

That is an incontrovertible adage of the Orient, "Need hath no peer."

Except for her drooling mouth, the body of the woman was emaciated and juiceless. On her face it was written how she was an overcomer of evil by evil.

"These are practically dead ones," I say to myself, "non-creative, non-productive parasites. Their purposes are paralyzed. None of us can help them."

Then the woman reminds me how, years and years ago, away three thousand miles to the south, she and I were girls together and that I had been in her home. Wouldn't I release her for the sake of her mother and the old times?"

Yet, because she had disclosed her identity to me and had betrayed her family—one of the oldest and most honorable in Ontario—I could only feel that she had fallen deeper in the social scale.

"What would her mother have me do?" this was the question. Suddenly, in spite of the moral abyss over which she had fallen, she seemed to have a claim upon me. Even a magistrate may suffer soul ache and feel a piteous perplexity.

"What would her mother have me do?" Yes, this was the question. There was only one answer. The sufferer must be freed from drug habituation and from the poignancy of her suffering. She must be placed in the Provincial Jail. It would have been better to send her to an institution for the cure of addicts, but we have no such hospitals in this Dominion, and no one seems to care whether we have or not. Indeed, there can be found persons in authority who will tell you there is not a dollar in Canada for this purpose.

They were bitter words the woman uttered when I imposed a term of months upon her, but these fell scatheless upon me, for I knew this severe and unrelenting treatment was, after all, only a demonstration of kindness, and maybe of love, for the victim herself. In dealing with such cases, the slack hand and the lenient rule must ever prove the cruel ones.

I have never seen her since—this girl companion of long ago—but, wherever she is, may the Upholder of the Skies have pity on her weakness.

Another woman who had fallen under the infamous enchantment of morphine, came to us a year or so ago and requested a term in jail. She had been taking "joy shots" for several years, and had fallen into a frenzy of desperation where her one idea was to commit suicide. As a demonstration of spent humanity, her condition lacked nothing. She had small volition and less hope, while her whole appearance was that of extreme dejection. It was a drug user, himself, who once said that "Of all things which it is odious to pay for, a luxury enjoyed in the past is most so."

This woman, after spending seven months in jail, came to see me on her release.

From a blear-eyed, unutterably lean woman, she had become roseate with health. Indeed, she had recovered sufficiently to jest about her former desire to commit suicide.

"You see, Mrs. Murphy, I really couldn't let it happen, for the city coroner would be sure to say 'temporary insanity,' and there has never been any of that in our family."

It is alleged that this woman has again returned to the use of morphine, but of this I cannot speak with certainty. It is not unlikely, however, for Judge Cornelius F. Collins of the United States says that 90% of all addicts who have been treated in hospitals have relapsed after regaining liberty. Dr. Royal S. Copeland, Vice-President of the American Health Association, thinks that 50% would probably be more correct. The general public would be safe to strike the mean and say 70%. Addicts return to the habit because the pedlars, to get their custom, waylay and offer them free drugs. The pedlars boast that it is too late for the traffic to be stopped, their power over the populace being tenable against all odds.

In Canada and Great Britain, no steps have been taken to prohibit the sale of hypodermic syringes but, in some States of the American Union, it is a crime to be found unlawfully in possession of one without a doctor's prescription. In the State of New York the statute reads as follows: "No person except a dealer in surgical instruments, apothecary, physician, dentist, veterinarian or nurse, attendant or interne of a hospital, sanatorium or institution in which persons are treated for disability or disease, should at any time have or possess a hypodermic syringe or needle, unless such possession be authorized by the certificate of a physician issued within the period of one year thereto."

Undoubtedly, the Opium and Drugs Act of Canada should be amended so that the possession of a hypodermic syringe should bear the same penalty as the possession of illicit drugs.

A manufacturer's agent who covers all parts of Canada with his wares said the other day that since his last annual trip the demand for hypodermic needles had increased over one thousand per cent. Without vouching for the absolute correctness of his figures, we may safely take it that the increase has been an alarming one.

In Vancouver, it is related recently that a woman who was an inveterate drug-user, injected morphine into her baby whenever it cried or was troublesome. When the infant died, its body was found to be terribly punctured by the hypodermic needle.

A talented writer who was also a close observer has remarked, "If we hold faith in gold, notwithstanding base metal, let us be assured that nowhere is that gold found at a higher percentage of purity than among doctors. Where one Faun has stolen the mantle of Æsculapius as the good sire lay sleeping, there are a hundred upon whom he has dropped it as upon worthy children."

That this is true has been evidenced of late by the action taken by the medical associations in disciplining those of their profession who have been proven guilty of a breach of medical ethics in the prescribing of opiates. The Harrison Narcotic Law of the United States provides that the opiate drugs and cocaine may be dispensed by a physician "in the course of his professional practice only," but unfortunately has not defined the meaning of these words.

The decisions of the courts to the present go to establish, however, the conclusion that the dispensing of opiates to addicts on the pretence of curing addiction does not constitute proper professional practice.

In discussing this matter, Thomas S. Blair, M.D., has said, "There is a tremendous incidence of cancer, advanced tuberculosis, inoperable surgical conditions, post-operative lesions, neglected cases of syphilis with aggravated tertiary symptoms, untreated bladder and prostatic cases, old focal infections, aggravated cases of rheumatoid arthritis, chronic asthma, gall-stone disease, painful undiagnosed lesions deeply visceral, and it sometimes is imperatively necessary that these persons be supplied narcotics, often in ascending dosage."

It is clearly not the intention of any Government to interfere with such legitimate practice, and no physicians should be intimidated in the treatment of disease or pathological conditions, other than drug addiction, including the alleviation of pain. Of course, in such cases, the physician to prescribe should be in personal attendance and not merely prescribing at a long range.

According to the Narcotic Regulations No. 35 of the United States, a physician is not regarded as in personal attendance upon a patient, within the intent of the statue unless he is in personal attendance upon such patient away from his office. The regulations of the State of New York also require that for professional treatment or in institutions, before prescribing narcotics, the physician must make thorough physical examination and place his notes of the same upon file.

"Professional practice" of this kind is something wholly different from that variety described by a prominent official in the Department of Narcotic Drug Control in New York. This official tells of a narcotic practitioner, or what they call a "script" doctor, who used to leave the upper sash of his basement window lowered so that his patients could toss their registration cards (as addicts) into the opening. Hundreds of these cards were gathered up daily by his wife who carried them to the doctor.

When arrested he was found in bed with forty-five prescriptions for patients whom he had never seen, but from whom he drew a very large revenue. The wickedness of such a physician seems hardly susceptible to amendment.

This official tells of a doctor who prescribed as many as eight hundred emergency prescriptions in one day, and of still another who prescribed a grain a day for an infant. This baby's mother earned her livelihood by cleaning drug stores and saloons, leaving the child every day on the sidewalk in a perambulator, for four hours. The drug was administered to keep the child asleep. The doctor had not examined the infant but prescribed a grain a day because he supposed it was an addict, its mother being one.

It was also found in New York that one of these commercial physicians prescribed in one month 68,282 grains of heroin, 54,097 grains of morphine and 30,280 grains of cocaine.

Dr. Prentice says the practitioner who prescribes for people who have not pathology except that of addiction, is difficult of apprehension in that he hides behind the cloth of a reputable profession.

Under the pretence of medical treatment for an assumed "disease," he sells his professional privilege in a sordid market for a very large return in money.

Dr. Prentice also tells of a certain professional he-wolf, now in the penitentiary, who sold from 100 to 2,600 prescriptions a week for ten months, charging $3.00 for each. Some of these "scripts" called for as much as 500 grains of heroin or morphine at one time. "It seems ineluctable, therefore," continues this fine crusader, "that a physician who supplies narcotic drugs to an addict, knowing him to be an addict, or who connives or condones such an act, is either grossly ignorant, or deliberately convicts himself as one of those who would exploit the miserable creates of the addict world for sordid gain. It may be that he is himself addicted to the drug and has thus become a victim of its power to produce such profound moral perversion. For such there can be but one verdict. Suspend or revoke his license to operate medicine by all means. Let him suffer the penalty of the law, and may God have mercy on his soul."

That the opinion of Dr. Prentice is being backed up by the judiciary is shown by the heavy sentences imposed on the physicians in the United States, convicted of commercializing in narcotic drugs.

A sentence of fifteen years was recently imposed on one, while nine and ten years respectively were imposed upon two others.

Judge Anderson of the United States Court at Indianapolis recently sentenced a "script" physician to two years in the Federal Prison in Atlanta. This man had plied his evil trade in the tenderloin district, and all his patients were girls from fifteen years of age upward.

Such physicians are not peculiar to the United States, but flourish in almost every town and city in Canada. That they also flourish in England is manifest by a report presented in 1921 to the Imperial Government, showing that during the year thirty million prescriptions had been issued.

These English figures are so appalling, that you perforce, return to re-read them to make sure that you have read aright.

The daughter of wealthy and influential parents, gave me the names of eight physicians in one city from whom she alleges that she and her girl companion purchased every other day, prescriptions for 60 grains of morphine and 30 grains of cocaine.

This girl would be given different names on the "scripts." She claimed that when the doctors hesitated about giving her the prescriptions, with all the instincts of the complete trapper, she produced the money for them, sometimes giving more than the usual charge, and in no such instance was she refused.

Give me leave here to change this statement somewhat, for the girl alleges that one of the physicians, whose name she mentions, invariably requested that she first surrender herself.

This girl also declares that she purchased many vials of morphine tablets from veterinary surgeons in different parts of the province and that these tablets were larger in size, but not of such good quality as those prescribed or dispensed by physicians.

Cocaine secreted in cigars not meant to be smoked. Opium pipes and narcotics seized by the police. Cocaine, which was found secreted in a doll, a jar of cold cream, a cake of soap, and the heel of a slipper.

It is quite clear that the animals treated by the veterinary surgeon cannot get "the habit" and that his purchasing or possessing large supplies must inevitably raise a question as to his professional integrity. The only addicted animal I ever heard of was an Edmonton dog which belonged to an old and decrepit Chinaman. This canine was wont to play truant from his master, making daily visits to a Chinese shop on the next street.

Upon investigation—that is to say by spying upon the shop—the old man found that two of his compatriots who occupied the premises while smoking opium, blew the smoke in the dog's face so that it became narcotized and learned the craving.

In March of this year, a physician in Canada was alleged to have sold 120 grains of opium to a horseman on the understanding that the liniment be used for a horse. The presiding magistrate fined him, holding that only a veterinary could prescribe for equines.

Cassidy, an old Irish friend of mine in the Province of Alberta, desired to get some whiskey for his horse the other day but found some difficulty in securing it.

"Sure, an' it's yer leddyship knows," he confided to me, "how as this Province is landed high and dry by a kind of mis-act about haulin' people to the police court if they take as much as a glass o' sperts. Wirra! woman, (not wishin' to be disrespectful) may God send sinse to the deluderin' creatures that be after makin' the laws.

"It's like this, y'see, I goes over to the druggist, a good-for-nothin' jackeen, an' sez I to him, sez I, "My horse does be sick—all av tremblin' like—an' I'm come for a nice dhrop of whiskey till give him. Wather's kind of cold on a horse's stomach.

"An' this jackeen, up an' sez, sez he, 'I do be havin' some poor stuff not fit for humans to drink, an' you can have this for yer old nag if you like.' Faith, 'tis the truth I'm telling you: them's the very words that come out of the bowld and ugly face of him."

"And what did you say to him, Cassidy?" asked I. "These townsmen don't know much about horses do they, Cassidy?"

"I told him how he was after speakin' like a furrin spy sure enough, an' he said, sez he, as how I'd be had up for false pretenses and bad language. An' I said, "I'll be afther lettin' you know that my horse has a dacint taste fer sperts an' needs a lot of sootherin' an' care. There'll be no bla'guard blisters fer yon horse, sez I, even if the weather is at 40 bezero. Troth, an' I'll be givin' that horse none av yer moonshine rubbitch nather. It is best he'll be afther havin' even if it's the price av the horse itself'."

"But, Cassidy, did he sell ye the real drop?" I ask, "you forgot to tell me that."

"Sure an' ma'am it's yourself that does always be interested-like in horses," replied old Cassidy with a gentle but perceptible lowering of the right eyelid, "an' may the strength of the saints be on you, now an' foriver more, but it's not for the loikes of me to be tellin' your leddyship about everything in these blessed days of telepattery when folks do be after telegraphing each other without money."

Writing in the Boston-American of the slow-reduction cure as compared with the absolute withdrawal of narcotics, Abraham C. Webber has drawn attention to the story of the old lady who, to be kind to some kittens she desired to dispose of, drowned them in warm water instead of cold. This, he continues, is the reasoning employed in the so-called, slow-reduction cures, the idea being to prolong the treatment so long as the drug user is bringing money to the "dope" doctor. It goes without saying that the user himself is a strong advocate of this method. This cure is generally known as "the ambulatory cure" and means that the "patient" may walk around as usual attending his business. In the treatment, he surrenders himself or feigns to surrender himself, to the method of tapering off the dosage until he is able to entirely abandon the sleep-producing substance.

Having the drug in his possession without dread of interference from the police, it is easy for him to promise the physician to cut down the amount every day. If the physician be sincere and keeps gradually reducing the dose, the patient goes to another doctor and gets similar treatment. Indeed, as a peripatetic patient he may acquire with crafty ingenuity a very considerable supply of drugs against the rainy day when his tolerance for narcotics has increased still further.

In Report No. 540 of the Untied States Public Health Service, it is clearly set forth that the physician using this method for the purpose of cure, places himself in the power of the patient, and that his good faith becomes, to a great extent, dependent upon theirs.

In a word, he must give what the patient wants, not what judgment dictates. The Health Service speaks with authority on this matter, the method having been tried out by the Government of the State of New York. During the eleven months their clinic was in operation, three thousand persons were induced to take slow-reduction method but none of these were cured. One of the workers in the clinic who had argued strongly for this system, and who at first, had been extremely enthusiastic, has been obliged to confess that "The narcotic clinic stands out as an enormously expensive and colossal failure." The story of what actually happened is so striking a demonstration of the inutility of the slow-reduction cure, we venture to quote it in part:—"The first day the clinic was opened, cocaine was dispensed, but it was stopped on the second day. The chief drugs which were sold were heroin and morphine, ninety per cent. of the addicts being heroin users. All classes attended the clinic—the underworld, the criminal, respectable men and women including physicians, clergymen, nurses and actors.

"The addict was started on the maximum dose of fifteen grains. Thereafter, the dose was regularly reduced in accordance with the decision of the United States Supreme Court. Demoralization set in, and the addicts became discontented.

"When the addicts reached the irreducible medium, they were compelled to go to the hospital, or were refused further doses at the clinic. At this period, they lost sight of thousands of addicts.

"As the dose became smaller, demoralization grew. The constant reduction of the dose incensed the addict and he resorted to petty larceny—stole pocketbooks, fountain pens, and any small saleable article he could lay his hands upon. He also lied and forged in order to obtain additional drugs.

"The majority of the addicts who patronized the clinic were of the underworld type and the respectable men and women who were compelled to go there through poverty were soon demoralized. Their addresses were secured and they were followed to their homes.

"Pedlars openly plied their trade in the clinic in spite of six supervising policemen. When one pedlar more daring than the others was arrested, another immediately took his place.

"In the course of time the addicts were shut out of the lavatories and retiring rooms which had been assigned to them to self-administer the drug, as they grossly abused these privileges. The addicts then resorted to an adjacent park where, in the open air, and before groups of school children, they applied the hypodermic needle and generally conducted themselves in an unseemly manner. The scenes became so scandalous that petitions were sent to the Governor of the State, and to others, calling for the suppression of these demoralizing daily exhibitions by the closing of the clinic.

"Within a period of eleven months, the clinic had run its course. It had failed as a clearing-house for the hospitals; had become a profitable market for pedlars and the so-called reduction method had failed to cure any addicts."

In answer to a questionnaire sent out from Washington to the physicians registered under the Harrison Narcotic Act, replies were received from 30 2/3 per cent. The replies showed there were 73,150 addicts under this slow-reduction treatment. On the basis of 100 per cent. replies (presuming the same average to be maintained) the number of addicts would total 237,655.

It is hardly possible to compute the amount of money spent in drugs and in medical fees by these addicts in what has proven an entirely useless method, most of which money has been extracted from their credulous and long-suffering relatives who have thus been misled into parting with their dollars.

If the addict be wealthy, he shows no marked anxiety to be cured, in that he receives his daily supply in defiance of laws and regulations.

Or if these become in any way pressing, the addict hies him off to the hospital where the police cannot follow, and continues his "treatment" without let or impediment.

A writer in The Survey claims that an estimate based on these reports charges ninety-eight per cent. of the total narcotics to be one-third of the practitioners—the men of inferior talent, and most of them over fifty years of age.

Another authority says, "There is a strong probability that the doctor who specializes in an office practice for the treatment of drug addiction does not represent the best standards of the profession."

Feeling that laws are improper intrusions on their professional prerogatives, these physicians who are "hard to show," raise a lamentable cry about the soul-rending agonies which are undergone by "the victims" who are suddenly taken off the drug, and of the imminent danger of death to those so deprived.

Most of us have accepted these statements as irrefutable because we had no reason for thinking otherwise, nor any opportunity of proving the contrary. Most prison wardens have learned, however, that a drug addict, with words of wail and clamor of grief, will simulate the most dangerous symptoms if he or she can thereby obtain the usual "shot" of morphine.

If no such hopes are held out, the addict subsides much more quickly than one would have expected.

This method of sudden withdrawal, as opposed to the ambulatory or slow-reduction cure, is described in the jargon of the jail as "the cold turkey" treatment.

Speaking of it an official in the jail remarked that if ever one broke in a wild western broncho, the experience would be helpful here. Perhaps he had in mind the reply made by a Texan ranchman when Elbert Hubbard asked "When do you break your horses?"

"Pardner," was the reply, "pardner, we have no time to break horses in Texas, we just climb on and ride them."

This routine of immediate withdrawal has been tried on 25,000 cases at the large hospitals and penitentiaries of the United States, for the past several years, without any deaths resulting. The same applies to the majority of the jails in Canada.

If, however, the patients were suffering from organic diseases of the kidneys, lungs, or heart, a more gradual method was adopted, but the withdrawal was certain and complete.

Alfred C. Prentice, A.M., M.D., in the Journal of the American Medical Associations, published an article showing the effects and treatment of the "cold turkey" method.

The Department of Health at Ottawa, has been permitted to reprint this article in pamphlet form and has distributed it among the physicians and magistrates of Canada.

Dr. Prentice says in part, "Addicts must be maintained under rigid control, generally in a suitable institution, and should be in bed from three days to a week during the withdrawal of the treatment.

"Withdrawal symptoms are typical, though not constantly present to the same degree. Some addicts enormously exaggerate their sufferings and complain bitterly, striving to excite sympathy by displaying an hysterical emotionalism, anticipating another dose of the drug. Others endure their discomfort with stoicism with the idea of being through with it quickly. They complain of abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, pains in the bones, great restlessness, insomnia and fear. All these symptoms can be masked to a great extent by the administration of 1/200 grain of scopolamin hybromate for the first thirty-six hours, every six hours. During this period, in fact, up to the end of seventy-two hours, the patients are disposed to remain in a semi-hypnotic condition, thirst being the chief complaint; and plenty of water to drink relieves that.

"To quiet their restless excitement, sulphonal, chloral, paraldehyd, etc., may be used if indicated; but the hot pack, tub bath, drip sheet, and drip enema of physiologic sodium chloride, or of sodium bicarbonate solution aid materially.

"In from three to five days their vomiting of bile has ceased, their appetite returns, they eat and digest substantial food, they gain in strength and weight, regularly increasing their weight by from 25 to 50, or 100 pounds, in two or three months and they are off the drug, having had none from the beginning of the treatment.

"In the vast majority of cases, it must be stated by way of caution, the habit has been broken off, and the craving no longer requires that it be satisfied, but it may be reawakened and allowed to dominate the individual again, if he permits any relaxation of his self-control. His cure in that sense, then, cannot be said to be permanent until he has regained mastery of himself."

Prisoners who have experienced different methods of withdrawal invariably prefer "the cold turkey" cure, although the prisoners of slippery will and low mentality, frankly acknowledge that when the chance again presents itself, they will go back to the habit. Nearly all of them do, but chiefly for the reason that the pedlars tempt them to it as soon as they return to their old haunts and old associations.

In defence of the immediate withdrawal system as opposed to the ambulatory or slow-reduction cure, Dr. James Hamilton, the Commissioner of Correction, New York, has said: "A terrible example of the result of ambulatory treatment for drug addiction was seen in the City Prison recently. The victim was a young man who for seven years had been addicted to morphine, heroin and cocaine. There was not a square inch on his thighs, abdomen and arms that was not covered with an abscess, or an ugly looking ulceration. He had been receiving forty grains of heroin and ten grains of cocaine every day from one of these commercial doctors. He was a member of a prominent family, and his parents were so distracted that they were about to give up hope of rescuing him. If this victim were to receive ambulatory treatment he would never be free from the craving of the drug. This case clearly shows the danger of ambulatory treatment and the awful menace of the commercial doctor."

The immediate withdrawal cure is one which calls for institutional treatment, so that the patient may be under strict control, that drugs may not reach him surreptitiously, and that he may have the attendance of a physician to guard against a collapse.

In a letter received recently from a Police Magistrate in one of our Canadian cities, he says: "We should have a lock sanatorium where magistrates should have power to commit addicts, where they would be kept until they received a certificate that they were cured of the habit."

He says further, "There is a great danger in allowing addicts to roam the country at large in that they are continually introducing the habit to some other person. For the safety of the public and the addicts themselves, a sanatorium of the nature I suggest is desirable."

The Health Department at Ottawa is heartily in accord with the institutional idea. The officer in charge of the Narcotics Division has pointed out that, according to statistics, the more addicts you have in a community, the more you can expect to have inasmuch as addicts make addicts. Persons taking habit-making drugs seem to derive pleasure in having their friends take these also.

"For this reason," the officer says, "it is of the utmost importance that provision should be made for institutional treatment of the drug addicts in every city and town of any size and importance. The question of providing free institutional treatment for these drug addicts is, of course, one altogether for the municipalities and provinces to deal with."

Before closing the subject, this might be a good place for the laity to ask the medical profession whether, in view of the rough but entirely successful methods of the jails and public wards, portions of their therapeutics on narcotics might not be re-written for, assuredly a form of professionalism which is detrimental to the public weal should be set aside or substituted by a better one.

Although it does not say so specifically, perhaps something of this kind was contemplated in the report of the committee on narcotic drug addiction, which was adopted in November, 1921 by the joint meeting of the American Public Health Administration, Food and Drugs, and Laboratory Associations, at their fiftieth annual meeting in New York City:-

"That the importance of educating the physicians as to the dangers of inducing addiction through medical practice, and as to the best methods of avoiding such dangers, he emphasized.

"In view, however, of the present unsatisfactory state of their medical problem, and of the very diverse opinions existing as to its bearing upon legislation and police regulations, your Committee believes it to be in the public interest that a research Committee of clinicians, bio-chemists, and psychiatrists would be appointed with official sanction, to investigate all phases of the question and thereafter to make an authoritative pronouncement on the medical problems involved."

Back to Table of Contents   Go to Part II, Chapters 17 to 25