p. 16 | Becoming Drunken

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 13, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 19.

Becoming Drunken.

It is contended that the liquor-drinking habit is increasing. By some this is denied. But certain it is that it is used in homes and by women more than it was twenty-five years ago. This is especially true in fashionable circles, and in circles which aim to ape the fashionable. Besides this evil there are many drugs used of a more or less toxic character. They have been so mixed with “nervines” and “tonics,” of which they form the essential element desired, that the use of the concoction is equivalent to the use of the drug by itself. A recent grand jury in Chicago, the Medical Record of New York (April 18) tells us, “probing into the question of the sale of dangerous drugs, came to some startling conclusions.” The Illinois State Board of Pharmacy had testified that the sale of dangerous drugs in Illinois and Chicago was carried on to a large extent, and the grand jury confirmed this, and declared that there was “an alarming growth in the sale and use of cocaine.” The drug was sold without a physician’s certificate. The London Speaker comments in like strain; and the Medical Record says: “The cocaine habit is undoubtedly on the increase, and is more prevalent in this country than anywhere else. . . . Laws are needed everywhere to restrict the sale of dangerous drugs and of patent medicines composing the same, so that temptation may not be placed in the way of the perverse and neurotic inhabitants of this and other lands.” The query arises: For how many of the increasing and unnatural crimes are these drugs responsible? The world is becoming drunken. It is a time literally for Christians to “watch and be sober.”