An Enslaving Habit

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 28, 1913

An Enslaving Habit.

We wish to warn our readers one and all against the use of the drug heroin. It is derived from morphin, and is used in the treatment of various ailments. Says the Journal of the American Medical Association: “It is often prescribed for cough, the result of irritating conditions in the air passages, and physicians not infrequently tell their patients what drug they are prescribing, so that indirectly the patient comes to look on heroin as a harmless remedy for his cough. Even physicians are not sufficiently alive to the danger of habit from its use. In one instance a patient told a physician, who was called to treat him for an attack of laryngitis, not to give him anything that contained opium, because he had formerly been a slave to this drug. The physician replied: ‘I will give you some heroin; there is no danger of habit from that.’ This the patient took, with the result that he later had as much difficulty in breaking away from the heroin as from the opium habit.” It forms a part of certain remedies, and is called harmless. Dr. John Phillips, of Cleveland, says that it is used extensively in the tenderloin districts in large cities by “snuffing.” “The heroin habit is just as bad as the morphin habit,” says the Journal.