CHAPTER IV
PSYCHOLOGY AND DRUGS
Drug habits may be classified in three groups: the first and largest is created by the doctor, the second is created by the druggist and the manufacturer of proprietary and patent medicines, and the third, and smallest, is due to the tendency of certain persons toward dissipation.
The major importance of the first two groups is due to the fact that they include by far the greater number of cases, and to the pitiful fact that such victims are always innocent. Speaking generally, and happily omitting New York State from our statement, it is safe to say that the manufacturer, the druggist, and the physician are without legal restraint despite their importance as promoters of drug habits, while the comparatively unimportant drug-purveyor in the under-world is held more or less strictly in control by the police, and is subject to severe punishment by the courts in case of a conviction.
With few exceptions, the part which the doctor plays in the creation of drug habits is due to lack of knowledge; but the druggist’s part in the spread of this national curse is purely commercial, and may justly be designated as premeditated. He always has gone and always will go as far as is permissible toward creating markets for any of the wares that he sells.
Regulation of the upper-world in regard to the distribution of habit-forming drugs will automatically regulate the under-world in its similar activities. The amount which will be smuggled by those of criminal tendencies always will be small as compared with the amount improperly distributed through channels now recognized as legitimate until all the States have passed restrictive legislation founded upon, modeled after, and coöperative with New York State’s legislation; and all this must be backed and buttressed by Federal legislation of a special kind before real and general good can be accomplished in the United States. Illicit drugs rarely find their way into the possession of users who have acquired drug habits through illness or pain. So it must be admitted that most of the effort that in the past has been made toward restrictive legislation has really been devoted to the interests of the unworthy rather than to those of the worthy. Save in New York State, the man or woman with a sheep-skin—the doctor, the druggist, or the nurse—remains virtually a free-lance, permitted to create the drug habit in others or in himself or herself at will.
THE DOCTOR A MEANS OF SPREADING THE DRUG HABIT
The man in severe pain is immediately exposed, by the very reason of his misfortune, to the physician with a hypodermic or the druggist with a headache powder; the man who cannot sleep may at any moment be made a victim by the physician whom in confidence he consults, or by the druggist to whom he may foolishly apply for “something” which will help him to secure the necessary rest. Save in New York State, the druggist’s shelves are crowded with jars and bottles holding dangerous compounds which he may dispense at will, his drawers are crowded with neat pasteboard boxes containing powders which are potent of great peril. The public will have made a long step toward real safety when it realizes that any drug which brings immediate relief from pain or which will artificially produce sleep is an exceedingly dangerous thing.
The sick man’s confidence in his doctor is one of the doctor’s greatest assets; it has saved innumerable lives. It is of the same general nature as the mysterious mental phenomena which frequently control physical conditions, and which have been capitalized by various bodies, such as Faith Cure and Christian Science; but if this is an asset to the physician, the general public knowledge that he carries in his case or in his pocket drugs which he can use without restraint of law for the relief of pain may become a general peril. In the old days when the doctor’s work was a mysterious process, operating by methods of which he alone was cognizant, this peril was less well defined; but now that the spread of education has made everybody a reader and periodical literature of the times has given even children a smattering of knowledge concerning medical matters, the nature of the means by which the doctor works his miracles is well known, and his unrestraint may become a public peril.