The Washington times., 1922-05-13
BY ANNIE LAURIE.

iouT DOy anu my girl, hIt tHcy
going TO be drawn into the narcotic
drug net in spite of everything?
Not il the Miller bill passes the
Senate-perhaps
No real danger to your children or
mine, anyhow? Don't be too sure
about that.
Did you see the dispat Ch"s from
Denver in the. paper two or three
days ago? Rather interesting that
news from Colorado about the drug
ira fife and thg school boys and schoo!
girls.
It's all in the report of the new
grand jury in Denver.
The jury reports to Judge Lewis,
of Colorado, that there is no doubt
whateVe that the drug ring is
attempts to get new customers by
teaching high school boys and girls
in Colorado the dope habit"
Dope peddlers hang around the
downtown high schools all day
long" That's what the grand jury
report says in good plain English
and no hens and haws or maybes
) or perhapses about It.
Wen, what of it?
Does 1t surprise you?
Why should IL? Everyone who
mas tfldNe any SERIOUS SIuuN VI
dope evil has known that for a
long time.
Sold on School Steps.
San Francisco found one of the
worst criminals in America selling
morphine, heroin and cocaine on
the steps of one of the high school
buildings, and the Federal authori-
ties arrested a man selling dope in
han
One of the students at the Uni
versity of California was arrested
In the very act Of selling cocaine
on the campus.
He told those to whom he was
trying to sell ii that 1t would help
them pass examinations and speed
them up in all their college work.
In New York the authorities ar
rested four different peddlers not
eight months ago, everyone of them
selling or trying to sell cocaine to
school children. When the children
couldn't buy. the agents Of the
Drug Ring were willing to give
away a powder just TO start bust.
ness.
They didn't wait for the high
school students either. in New York.
They got them in the grammar
grades.
In Illinois the Drug Ring sent
agents out TO ID corn fields. Middle
West farmers are learning to be a
little suspicious when the new hired
man seems too friendly with the
son of the house.
The hired man has turned out to
be an agent for the drug ring several
times.
why sell to the young?
That's aV 70 a N GUnr--tha
they are the easier they are to vic.
timize, and the drug ring, by an ac-
curate syste moi counting, expects
every new victim to be good for six
more.
The drug addict is az dangerous as
a leper-all who have gone into this
subject at all know that.
or course, there are some poor
victims who would die rather than
to teach another the road to misery
which has broken their own hearts
and wrecked their own lives
Doing Good Business.
These are people who would give
all they have or ever hope TO have to
be cured themselves, and nobody in
the world is more to be pitied than
the poor creature caught in the net,
struggling so desperately to escape.
But these are the exceptions. The
average drug addict seems actually
possessed to drag everyone be can
clutch down with him.
There appears to be n kind of
subtle and sinister hypnotism about
the whole business and besides it's
good business TO get new victims.
Why not The addict himself needs
money for his own drug and he can
make enough from the sale of few
bindles to buy his own poison.
And sometimes If he doesn't work
fast enough to make new victims the
small dealer may refuse 10 sell him
his own poor pitiful allowance which
lust barely keeps him alive.
System-it's nothing hut system
the whole dreadful, cruel, wicked
business. system TO buy and sell
human bodies and human souls at 40
much pulse beat
Congressman Miller, who intro
duced the anti.narcotic hill into the
House the other day when II went
through without dissenting vote,
Las made a study Of thesy conditions
That's why his heart is In his
Dcasure'