Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-02-25
HOW THE HABIT SPREADS

f1f the authorities of tina coast and Rocky
mountain rtates don't watch out said a
San Francisco man of some prominence
who was in Washington recently, they'll
have to be establishing sanitariums and
cures for their brigades of yen-hock ma
nipulators before many years. Thers is a
lot of opium smoking going on back here
on this side OF the Mississippi, know, but
it is in the ratio of the American use of
Scotch whisky to the American consump-
ton of Kentucky rye and bourbon compared
with the vast and widely distributed con-
sumption of opium in pipes in the far west.
The evil is worse in the big coast cities
than it is anywhere else, but during the
past ten years or so 1t has been steadily
and rapidly extending inland, and 1t has
now got to be pretty serious matter for
the western people to consider as far east
as Denver. Men and women who fall into
the habit of smoking opium are, rule,
nomadfc lot and an exceedingly contami-
mating lot to boot, and 1 am of the opin-
ion that the white hop smokers of San
Francisco and Portland. two cities in
which for many years dope cooking has
been too common to attract any attention
except on the part of strangers, are much
more responsible for the spread of the habit
to the far interior throughout the west
than the Chinese, who are generally blamed
for 1t. Cinnamon never go ramming around
for customers for their hop Iayouts, and
III Inc cOdSI cities nine out OF every ten
white men or women who indulge in opium
smoking acquire the habit before they ever
see the inside of a Chinese opium Joint.
ihey generally go at 1t out of pure fool
1shness or wantonness, under the tutelage
of opium smoking friends don't think /
am alone in the opinion that the man or
woman who deliberately teaches another
person to monkey with yen-hock is as
a murderer.
There was a singularly fiendish case of
TINS Kind OF thing in one of the secondary
Glues OF California about dozen years ago.
was living there at the time A bookkeep-
er and his wife came to the place from
San Francisco. They were young people
neither of them thirty years old-and both
OF them were well-educated, well-mannered
ana unusually attractive socially. / never
saw either one of them until the excite
ment was all over. but when did see them
L could have told a mile away that they
were both dope smokers and violent ones
at mat Inc man got a good job as head
nookkeeper for a steamboat company, and
the couple hauled their furniture from San
francisco and settled down in a house
winch the WIFE, who was tasteful, made
cozy and attractive. The pair Joined a
church, and within a few months they were
on visiting terms with some of the best peo-
pie In the town. After half year or so
several of the mothers of the young women
noticed that their daughters were visiting
the home of the bookkeeper and his wife
with singular regularity, and they also OBJ
did not seem to be helping the girls health
or spirits any. None of them understood
what the trouble was, however. Finally,
unough. when two young women who had
been sternly ordered by their fathers to
cease their visits to the bookkeeper's wife
ran away 80 San Francisco together with
out stopping to do any packing, there was
an investigation which resulted in a COM
couple got out of the town and state
just bit before the investigation came
to head or it would have gone hard
with them. 1t was discovered that the
bookkeeper's wife had converted nearly
twenty or the incest girls in the town into
confirmed opium smokers, and six of these
girls, including the two who had run away
from their homes. afterwards went all to
pieces on the streets of San Francisco.
The remainder of them had to be
packed OFF to sanitariums and institu
opium habit-mark the alleged for it
means heap in this connection-and all of
their lives were more or less wrecked. The
couple who had caused all the heavy trouble
afteIWard shot themselves in q garnet in
Spoka ne-total wrecks, the pair of them
from the incessant use of the drug
another case OF converting people en-
bloc into confirmed opium users happened
out in the Occur dAlene mining country less
than five years ago. 1t was when the grip
epidemic first Struck that section of the
country, and the miners were laid I'D with
the pesky infliction by the score In one CT
>
regularly appointed physician was a care
iess-rather, a criminal-young fellow who
took it into his fool head to assuage the
misery of the grip-sufering miners by
pumping morphine into them by the hole
sale. The miners got to liking the effects
of the stuff. of course, and the young idiot
OF a physician took alarm when he found
that many of them wers dema ldng sew
eral jabs day with his hypodermic needle.
A very large number of these rugged,
hardy men were far plunged in the vicious
morphine habit by the time the mining
company's doctor got through with Them
and these got little needles of their own
when they were able to get UP and walk
around. There is no way of estimating
just how much damage the fool man of
medicine did during that period with mis-
hypodermc morphia needle.
About the first thing the easterncr who
visits San Francisco for the first time
wants to be shown is series of opium
dens-from the Chinese hotpoint up to the
swell, ornately furnished opium smoking
establishment run by white men for white
patrons. A pretty large percentage of these
fasteners want to take hack at the
opium pipe. too, when they are conveyed
around among these joints 1t is foolish
work. and ought to be discouraged. 1t is
dangerous stuff to fool with.