DRUG ADDICTION. Drugs result ing in formation of habits are numerous, but the main ones are usually morphine and other products of opium, cocaine, and alcohol. The latter is rarely in cluded under this head. The practice of injecting drugs did not come into use in Europe until after the invention of the hypodermic needle in 1845. After that time it spread through Europe and America with great rapidity until it was estimated in 1893, there were 100,000 cases of morphinomaniacs in Paris alone. Its use in the United States was wide spread largely because of the increasing Chinese population and the ease with which opium was imported. The cocaine habit is of more recent growth, but when it started, hardly forty years ago, its progress was amazingly rapid. For a time it was spread by its excessive use in patent medicines, and doctors' pre scriptions. Caffeine, a drug which in its effects resembles closely cocaine, is pres ent in tea and coffee and makes their excessive use harmful to the nervous system. The effect of the use of tobacco is a more disputed point, but there seems to be agreement that its use tends to promote hardening of the arteries and increased blood pressure. Drugs, such as chloral and veronal, are used to in duce sleep and are almost equally injuri ous as morphine in their effects upon the nervous system. Acetanilid and anti pyrin are drugs used in the preparation of many patented headache relievers and their continued use is certain to produce anaemia and weakness of the heart.
Attempts to remedy this spread of the use of drugs have been earnest and in some measure effective. Most important
of all has been the outlawry of the opium trade by an agreement between nearly all the civilized nations of the world. In the United States a federal law placing a prohibitive tax upon all narcotics imported into the United States, over and above that which is needed for medical purposes, has been passed. Many State laws, some, espe cially that of New York, very stringent in their provisions, have been enacted. Drug stores are compelled to make affi davit to the amount of narcotics in their possession and to issue them only upon doctors' prescriptions. The latter are also carefully watched in this particular and any widespread and continuous pre scriptions of morphine may lead to a re vocation of the doctor's license to prac tice. Nothwithstanding these measures, Dr. Copeland, Health Commissioner of New York, estimated that in the winter of 1918-1919, there were in the City of New York not less than 60,000 persons addicted in a serious way to the use of drugs. The United States was still im porting 500,000 pounds of opium legally and illegally, which was ten times as much in proportion as that imported by other countries. The business of secur ing and distributing opium and its prog ress is found almost entirely among people who are criminals in other re spects, as it is found that drugs lead to crime much more frequently than crimes to drugs. The United States Health Service in 1919 reported an increase in the use of narcotics in twenty States.