The number of drug addicts in America to-day are fairly startling. The number is variously estimated in New York City alone as from ten thousand to one hundred thousand. It is said that there may be a million in the country. Yet these figures are the merest guesswork, by no means substantiated. Certain it is that the campaign of the New York Health Department has uncovered thousands of them, and any other city that chose to do so, could produce facts equally startling.
The laws on our statute books concerning the prescription of narcotic drugs are powerless to deal with the situation. It is shooting into the air to try to "regulate" this condition. It is as thoroughly well "regulated" as it can ever be by the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, a Federal Law whose enforcement is in the hands of the Internal Revenue Department. By the provisions of this Act, every pound of opium or its derivatives that comes into this country, legitimately, is accounted for, and its distribution, both wholesale and retail, made a matter of record. Thus, the Board of Trade returns show the amount imported by the big wholesale drug houses. These must account for their sales to the retail drug stores, and the amounts must tally. The drug stores can only sell narcotic drugs on a physician's prescription, and the prescriptions are kept on file, and the quantity sold must correspond to the quantity called for by these prescriptions, as well as to the amount obtained from the wholesale drug house. In prescribing narcotics, the physician is obliged to write his prescription in triplicate—one copy for his own protection, one copy for the local druggist, and one copy to be filed with the health department. Nor is he allowed to prescribe narcotics for an addict without decreasing the dosage. His prescription cannot call for thirty grains of morphia day after day—it must show, in a chronic case of this kind, a daily diminution of the amount prescribed, thus indicating a desire to get the patient off the drug, eventually. All these records are kept on file, open to inspection whenever an accounting is demanded, consequently any leak can be instantly accounted for. This Harrison Act is as comprehensive and as nearly perfect as possible, yet it does not cover the situation. By this means, violations can be detected, whether on the part of an unscrupulous physician or druggist, or even the wholesale house, but these violations are only occasional. The root of the evil remains untouched.
At one time, it was believed that carelessness on the part of the physician was chiefly responsible for creating drug addicts, but the recent campaign against violators of the Harrison Act seems to have completely exonerated him of this charge. For one patient who becomes a drug addict while under a doctor's care, through the accidental misuse of morphia, there are a hundred who form the habit through other ways. It is not the occasional, accidental victim, given morphia for the relief of pain, which is creating our thousands of drug users. It is not the occasional unscrupulous physician who is responsible. If this was all, we could easily cope with these unwitting abuses, or even deliberate instances of misuse. But the question goes deeper than this.
The Opium Monopoly was not established for any humane or altruistic purpose. It was not established to provide the medical profession with a drug for the relief of pain, to ease the agony of the injured and wounded, or to calm the last days of those dying with an incurable disease. This, which may be called the legitimate use of opium, is not the object of the Opium Monopoly. Used only in this manner, there would be no money in it. It is only when opium is produced in quantities far in excess of the legitimate needs of the world that it becomes worth while—to the Opium Monopoly. That Monopoly was established not to relieve pain and suffering, but with the deliberate intention of creating pain and suffering, by creating drug victims by the thousand. It is these hundreds of thousands of customers that are profitable. The menace to America lies in the large amounts of opium which are smuggled into the country for this purpose. Boys and girls of sixteen and seventeen first acquire this habit through curiosity, through association with what they call "bad company," peddlers who first offer it free, as a gift, well knowing that after a few doses the fatal habit will be formed. Where do these vendors obtain their supplies?
The daily papers often contain suggestive paragraphs. Thus the "New York Times," under date of February 28, 1919: "Seize Opium in Schenectady. Opium, valued by Federal officials at $10,000 was seized in Schenectady, and four Chinamen were arrested in a raid on Chinese places of business on Centre street to-day. The Federal officials expressed the belief that opium had been smuggled, and that Schenectady is the distributing point for this part of the State."
An item in the "Seattle Union Record," of June 24, 1919, gives us cause for further consideration.
BRITISH DRUG SHIP HELD BY UNITED STATES
Fine of $49,265 Assessed for Bringing "Dope" to America
Liner Allowed to Move Under Bond
No Arrests Made, Though Booze Is Found Aboard