The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-04-17


 'esults of study of the extent to which dangerous drugs Cocaine, morphine, and others) are consum- d. and the grip and effect which .hese narcotics have on the drug addict are made public today as the Yale University Press publishes Dangerous Drugs. the World Fight Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotics" by Colonel Arthur Woods, formerly New York police commissioners and now chairman of President Hoover's commission on employment.
 Colonel Woods finds that in spite of widespread popular information of evils or narcotics. ''the traffic in these dangerous drugs is huge and seems to be growing all the time. Existing measures for combating the smugglers are inadequate. and unless there is radical improvement, the evil will continue to spread and the scope of narcotic enslavement will grow in ever widening circles. It Is menacing situation"
 '.As for conditions in America" !" he says, "one of the most discour- aging factors is the negligible num- Der of major offenders who have been caught despite the magnitude of the illicite traffic. Although our laws seem to have been successful in keeping the products of our home factories out of the clandestine markets, little has been done to ap- prehend the men engaged in engi- neering the secret passage of drugs through thee ustoms. Since the passing of the federal narcotic act in 1914, actually thousands of addicts and small peddlers have gone into the federal prisons. while with but few exceptions the high financiers'of dope smuggling remain at large. In practice this state of affairs amounts to little more than traffic and permitting those who reap the large monetary benefits to go untouched"
 The international drug traffic at present shows signs of great vigor. Colonel Woods says. He tells of q new factory which has been estab- lished in Hungary which has yet not placed any drugs in the open market. The situation in Persia, he says, is especially menacing since Persia has never accepted the con- trol imposed by the league of na- tions, and has recently. passed a decree granting licenses to factories for the manufacture of drugs for II . Most ominous of all however. he says, is the recent trend of events in Turkey. Istamboul. which served for many years as re-export center for drugs did not have any factories for the manufacture of drugs until about three years ago, and now, he says, has three which are producing huge quantities ot morphine and heroin. Figures pub lished by the Turkish government show that during the first six months of 1930 seven tons of drugs were shipped to six foreign coun- tries, none of which reported the import of any drugs from Turkey
 The need for drastic action is clear Colonel Woods says. 1t must be drastic in each nation-and universal, among all nations. The H. licit traffic in narcotic drugs cannot be stopped unless two definite steps are taken, and taken everywhere. First, each nation on the face of the earth, by legislation and administra- tion, must confine the making and distributing of narcotics within its borders to medical and scientific needs; second, each nation mus: make resolutely certain that all narcotics entering it's borders or IedVlnE US DOTueTS are kept uHutI unfailing control, the transfers If drugs from one country to anothor being so vigorously supervised thar i they cannot wander from the straight and narrow path.
 These two requirements emerge. clear and commanding. from the study of the ways and means of the smuggler as he carries on his busi- ness today. He has found that he can use the channels of legitimate business with slight risk of almost no liability or punishment. He needs no special fleets of rumrunners, no buying their way across interna- special motor trucks sneaking or tional boundaries. His commodity makes itself at home easily among the normal channels of trade, and goes snugly and usually undisturbed to its evil end. Let the smuggler once get his hands on the alkaloids and they are as good as in the ad- diets needle. The spread between cost and selling price is enormous. and the ease of smuggling is sO great, owing to the concentrated nature of drugs, that small amounts yield large profits. The risks are slight in traffic which would be I,I 'syyy