The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1913-04-01

How would you like to make $780,
600 net profit each year on a capital
of forty iron dollars?
It's perfectly easy. There's a doctor
In the middle Sixties who makes just
that much profit each year selling CO.
of the stuff. He sells this for $40
and repeats as often as he thinks safe.
He does a large business through the
south-by mail-for a man who sells
coke over the counter to negroes
down there is apt to get a bird's-eye
view of life from a telephone poletop.
All day long q stream of men and
Momen-tiends and peddlers-passes
In and out of his office buying coke.
AS a commercial proposition the good
doctors scheme seems to be ideal. A
telephoned order to a wholesale house
will replenish his stock in twenty
minutes. His business is strictly cash
one, because d coke fiend would as
soon rock the good docsor as any 9TH
er man. Each customer makes other
customers-that being an oddity of
cept by Ratchet or chair rung in the
hands Of another customer. OF
course. there is the natural wear and
tear OF the business. His patrons will
pop off by slow starvation in the gut
ter or quick pneumonia in an alley
or the shuddering horrors in a hospi-
tai. But by that time they are really
They are so thoroughly wrecked that
they can rarely get the quarter for q
sniff. A little diligence in teaching
the habit to greenhorns keeps up his
supplies.
OF course there are foolish people
ridiculous chumps who would rob
a one-eyed apple woman of her red
pennies. but who wouldn't shake
hands with the doctor for a half in
terest in a sub-treasury-but who
cares for such cranks? The doctor is
getting the money, isn't he? He
should worry!
No one knows the money value of
the cocaine sold each year in town,
or how many thousand people use it.
One may guess from the business ex-
books were audited by Assist
District Attorney Delehanty-and
by the fact that the entire criminal
populace Of New York City sniff coke
hahitually. Perhaps that's a rather
broad statement.
about 1000 people charged with
felonies pass through u offices each
year." said Mr.. Delehanty. "Practi-
cally all OF them use cocaine. I don't
know whether crime follows cocaine,
cocaine follows crime. I only
know they are concomitants,"
Delehanty has drawn a bill which
seeks to mildly handicap the cocaine
seller. For example. it forbids any
person. doctor or other. to have more
than one ounce of the drug in his pos
session. Wholesalers are Of course,
excepted.
IAN ounce of cocaine would supply
the average family doctors practice
for two years." said Mr.. Delehanty.
Used as a 4 per cent. solution, one
man could not use an ounce on. his pa
tients in twenty-four hours unless he
did nothing else. This bill does not
prevent his buying by smaller guam
than an ounce on hand. But some or
the doctors are fighting the passage Of
the man of medicine Is above the law.
They frankly say that they will not
obey the Law II 1t is passed.
Mr.: Delehanty made 1t plain that
not all of the physicians of New York,
by any means, have allied theesmlves
against a bill which is being fought by
coke %peddlers and sleigh riders
which is a humorous way of referring
to the victim of a desire for 'snow."
But 1t Is rather odd that the principal
to the a%nti-cocaine bill
come from the doctors. just az
the principal opposition to Frederick
Harrison's bills to restrict the
use OF opium came from the medical
No doubt the opponents in
each instance were quite sincere.
Their opposition kept opium dens
open here and in every other large
city months after every one should
have been double locked. Their oppo-
sition makes 1t possible for little chill
dren to buy cocaine along with their
slate pencils. District Attorney Crop
sey proved that, over In Brooklyn. :.