The Washington times., 1922-05-04
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Out INTO the world, BACK comes tne
drug again into America.
Smuggled in by steamship. by
calling boats. across the border
from Mexico by motorcycle; by
mixers. by women carrying mar
ket baskets.
They found an old man selling
pencils down on the border a week
or SO ago. A harmless old chap
he seemed to be. but he had taken
the lead out of every pencil In his
pack and filled the space with CO.
csine and he had enough deadly
poison on his back to put half
continent out of business.
The stewards In the ships from
the Orient. the deck hands. the
passengers-by all these methods
and the heroin comes seeping In
like a hideous flood OF deadly
Across the country II creeps and
creeps. Young and old. rich and
poor, men and women-they are
swept away in the deadly. creeping
tide, and then when we read In the
Government reports that there are
, more people In the insane asyiums in
America than there are students In
all of our colleges-we wonder what's
the matter.
Ask the warden OF any peniten-
tiary what's the matter?
He'll tell you, and i won't take
him long to do IT.
The average age OF the average
prisoner in the American peniten-
tiary today Is below twenty--it used
TO be between twenty-eight and
thirty.
Boys Crowd Penitentiaries.
It's the boys who are crowding
sur penitentiaries to their doors to-
day. Boys from seventeen to twen-
ty-three. and eight out OF every ten
of them are slaves to some of these
deadly narcotics.
Ask the police in your own city
what 1t is that Ia keeping up this
carnival of hideous crime from one
end of the town to the other. The
police know-and they will tell you.
Nine times out Of ten the bold rob-
bery-the cruel personal attacks
the cold-blooded murders for money,
are committed by men. or by women,
or, worse yet, by boys and girls
scarcely out Of their school days,
and almost every one of them Is
what the police call dope fiend."
What's crowding our insane
asylums to the doors? Ask the doc
tors-they know, and they'll tell you.
1t used to be confined to the ten
derloin districts-the narcotic vice,
and the narcotic slavery, and the
narcotic degradation and despair.
They found the schoolboys using
narcotics In New York not so long
ago. Up in Seattle sixteen high
school girls were brought into the
police court. Every one of them is
the daughter of a prosperous and
respected family, and every one Of
them a dope fiend.'
Out in San Francisco they arrest
ed q notorious criminal selling CO.
caine and heroin on the steps OF the
high school.
Don't think your own family is
safe. ] saw as handsome and dis
tinguished looking a boy as ever
lived 60 on the witness stand in a
famous case in San Francisco and
tell how he had been dragged down
-down-down-unt he lived In the
alleys and slept in the streets. and
not until his mother hunted the
country over for him could she find
him. He tried to break the habit
tried again and again-but he
could not. He gave his testimony
because he wanted to be OF some
' use to somebody else IL he could.
And he is only one Of hundreds OF
thousa nds. There are over 10000
drug addicts in America today.
What are we doing? What are we
trying to do to stem this hideous
tide?
Julius Kahn. OF California. intro
duced a bill in Congress last fall,
asking for an investigation of con-
ditions. Chairman Porter, OF the
Foreign Relations Committee, of The
House OF Congress- has that bill in
his committee now. He has prom
ised to start an investigation. Con-
grees will soon be over, Mr.. Porter.
When is that investigation going to
begin?