p. 10 | Drug Victims

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 28, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 25.

Drug Victims.

According to the Literary Digest of May 21, which quotes a Government authority, there are more drug fiends in the United States in proportion to population than there are in China. Those addicted in the United States to drugs are estimated from one million to four million. The drug fiends of China are supposed to be about four million, or one per cent of its four hundred million population; while in this country they are estimated to be from one to four.

Prof. Irving Fisher, in his report on national vitality, declares that the use of harmful drugs in the United States is on the increase. It has also developed that in the United States, besides the use of opium, there is a wide-spread use of cocaine, a drug even more disintegrating and debauching than opium, and practically unknown in China. In Philadelphia a recent revelation shows that it has been peddled among school children. Dr. Kebler, the Government official referred to above, declares that notwithstanding the fact that legislation, federal, state, and territorial, has been adverse to the indiscriminate sale and use of opium, yet it has doubled within the last forty years, besides large quantities of other drugs which are deleterious and pernicious. Many learn to use them in medicated soft drinks and various patent medicines. In some cases these ruinous nostrums claim to cure the taste for the very drugs which they contain. Among these medicines are soothing sirups, catarrh and asthma cures, cough remedies, and headache mixtures.

The Farmer's Bulletin No. 393, issued by the Government, urges that very strict laws should be passed prohibiting and regulating the use of these poisons.