Arizona republican., 1920-12-07

lged with narcotic drugs, and it is a1- ways trying frantically to get rid of them. Thus the records of the local customs office show that a powerful opium ring was operating in 1909 and 1910 after President Roosevelt signed Dill prohibiting the importation of smoking opium into this country. And 20 years before that, when a sudden popular agitation rose against narcotic drugs, another ring of smugglers was playing tag with the customs officials. Since the passing of the Harrison Anti Narcotic Jaw, several rings have come into existence and gone out again. But trained by long experience the au- thorities are now we'll equipped for their work and the rxoeess of extinction 1 is becoming more and more expeA aAf customs officials have learned to search every nook and cranny of vessel for | drugs; to inspect every sailor and me- chanic employed on its decks. to take all of it's furniture apart, and still to be perfectly sure that opium is hidden somewhere in the near vicinity of their activities.
 Where They Hide 1t
 l Opium has been found in coal bunk i CTS, in the engines of the vessel in it's flour bins, in hollow books, and even in pianos and in the ships siren. Some | times it has been discovered behind false paneling and under staircases and convealed in hollow beams One large shipment of over thousand tins was taken from nine large, hermeticaIly sealed cylinders in the water tanks of a large ocean liner. Opium users, who include the addicts of such drugs as morphine and heoin containing opium, are unable to get along without their dope, and are willing to pay any price for it; hence, the smuggling of the drugs, if successful, is an enormously profitable undertaking. It is merely a question of thinking of a place to hide it. which has never been thought of be- fore.
 There is, however. another, and in the end more fatal, method of combat ting opium rings and that is through their victims-the drug addicts. In \ recent years, 1t has become commonly understood that the victims of the drug habit are sick people. and not necessar- fly dope fiends." Cities have become
 aware of their responsibility to these unfortunates, and no longer put them In jail, but in hospitals A few cities. which have tackled the problem in an especially vigorous manner, have estab- hshed clinics and special hospitals for
 their drug victims. Last year New
 York had a drug clinic, where addicts
 were supplied with narcotic drugs on a
 sliding downward scale until the pa
 tent had reached an ,idderucible min
 imum-that is, the smallest possible
 amount on which he could get along.
 Then they were placed in hospitals to
 be cured.
 Some Doctors Guilty
 Unfortunately New York. like every other city carrying on an anti
 narcotic drug campaign, was handi-
 capped in it's work by the Illegal activ-
 ities of persistent peddlers, many of
 them doctors. When the drug clinic was opened by the city health depart ment, with the SEnouncement that every drug addict must come there for his supply of drugs, a great and indig
 nant wall arose from several New York doctors 1t was an outrage, they as- serted, to bring the matter thus into the open. Families would be broken up
 when husbands found their wives al the 7 clinic, and vice versa. One prominent ] physician made a particularly eloquent speech in this connection which brought tears of sympathy to many oi , his auditors eyes. And meantime fir f the clinic at least 50 per cent of the 2 drug addicts were recording on theii ItS lS IIdtlOu CHIuS the name Of this
 same physician as the source of theil f drug supply 3 What New Yorw did for it's drug ad- [ diets, San Francisco is just beginning
 to attempt That is it is making ar l effort to treat them as sick people and
 to put them into hospitals instead O 9 fining them and putting them in jail - Men addicts are still treated in jail, il D is true, because there is not sufficient l hospital space to accommodate them , but it is at least significant that they t are being treated. Most of the womer 7 are being placed in an isolation hospi s tal where every possible precaution i.
 taken to see that no drugs are snug - gled in from outside sources Mean e while the state is considering the estab | lishment of an isolated drug addict col q ony on one of the Pacific coast islands