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DANGERS OF DEADLY COCAINE °',*dT T*'“’“‘‘-L'0 T- I it m hypodermic injections. Soon heapid Increase of the Most Insidious Drug I learned that the sensations were not at Habit—The Craving Usually Acquired by I all pleasant. Far from it! Quick afterI each period of intoxication came the' With the month of May comes the ! dread of reaction that calls for more and | opening of the six months harvest of | always more cacaine. The characterthe soda fountains. What will you istic physical and moral deterioration have?” asks the amiable clerk and j went on rapidly. The victim grew sal-points to a list of sirups, a row of gayly low-faced, sunken-eyed, restless, irrita-colored bottles and some large bowls on ble. He lost ambition and persever-the counter containing crushed straw- ance. He became a liar, a wreck, help-berries, sliced pineapple and other j less and useless, and within a year he j wotempting fruits. If you stick to the fruit sirups and the fruit is really good, no harm is done. On the contrary. But if you turn to the bottled attractions or listen to the promise of their much advertised qualities, then beware.Here is plain warning from Dr. L. F. Kebler, chief of the division of drugs in the government bureau of chemistry: “Attention is directed to the danger of soft drinks containing caffeine, extract of kola nut and extract of coca leaf, the active principle of the two latter being cocaine.”According to Dr. Kebler, scores of soft drinks, dangerously medicated, are sold at soda water fountains as stimulating and refreshing summer drinks without the slightest intimation to purchasers that their stimulating and refreshing qualities come from cocaine, a drug that produces one of the worst habits known to the medical prefession.We have seen,” said Dr. Kebler, how the opium habit may be acquired by the use of various proprietary or secret preparations usually employed as domestic remedies, and so the cocaine habit may be developed by the use of these much lauded soft drinks.”During a recent visit to Washington I talked with two heads of departments in the bureau of chemistry, both active in government prosecutions of drugged soda water sirups. “There is no question,” said one of these authorities, “that the presence of cocaine in soft drinks tends to create in the consumer, whether child or adult, a predisposition towards the cocaine habit.”It is evident that the manufacturers of these soft drink sirups have only one motive for putting cocaine into them— that is to make them popular, to make them taste good, to make them sell better. And this popularity, this pleasant taste and better sale come simply and solely because there is enough cocaine in these soft drinks to give something of the stimulating and exhilarating effect that cocaine always gives.“It is not uncommon,” says Dr. Kebler, “to find persons addicted to the use of medicated soft drinks. It is a well known fact that many factory employes, stenographers, typewriters and others subject to mental or nervous strain spend a part of their earnings for drinks of this character. Parents, as a rule, withhold tea and coffee from their children; but, having knowledge of the presence of cocaine, caffeine or other deleterious agents in soft drinks, they unwittingly permit their children to be harmed by their use.”Cocaine—what is it? The Standard Dictionary tells us: “Cocaine, a white, bitter, crystalline alkaloid contained in coca leaves; used in medicine as a local anesthetic.” And again: “Coca, the dried leaves of a South American shrub of the flax family, used in medicine as a tonic; chewed by tne native Indians as a nervine stimulant.” There is no connection between the coca shrub and the cocoa palm tree that produces cocoa nuts.An ounce containg 480 grains and a grain of cocaine is a dose. From awas placed in an asylum.Notice that all this came to pass because a perfectly well-meaning young man bought at a reputable drug store in Chicago what was advertised as an excellent cure for catarrh. And before he knew what he was doing and taking he had become a “coke fiend” and his life was irretrievably ruined.At Hull House, that haven of good works in Chicago, I found impressive corroboration of the statement that children easily fall into the cocaine habit. Dr. Hamilton, a woman bacteriologist of Hull House, made an investigation among boys and young men in the neighborhood and found that numbers of them were regular users of the drug. Dr. Hamilton found that the cocaine habit had spread through one group of seven boys. The youngest,Willie, was coming home from school one day when a negro who offered him a sniff of powder, saying it would make him feel good. Willie sniffed the powder and, as he expressed it, felt like a millionaire. The negro sold him what was lelt of the powder in a little pill box for 15 or 20 cents, and told the boy he would be around that corner every evening with more of the stuff. He also suggested that Willie inform his boy friends of the wonderful effects of this powder. ' Willie went back to the corner and bought more of the drug. He wanted to feel like a millionaire. He told his two brothers, young men of 17 and 18, and they tried the powder. One by one four of their friends were initiated until the group of seven was formed. All seven became absolutely demoralized; they quit going to school, stopped work, stayed away from home all night, going on regular cocaine debauches and spending as much as $7 in a single day for the drug. When their money gave out they would pawn their clothes, they would steal, they would do anything to get more money to buy more cocaine.Through the earnest efforts of the Hull House people these seven boys were cured of the habit. Dr. Hamilton thinks a cure is possible for the young, though rarely possible for adults. Even so, the effects of their long indulgence in cocaine did them permanent injury. Their power of resistence was enfeebled and three of them died of tubergulosis. It is a question, too, whether the others have been quite sound mentally.I talked with a husband and wife, both “coke fiends,” whom I found in a filthy hovel on “Cocaine alley,” the foulest part of Chicago, and they both assured me that they thought nothing of spending 84 or 85 a day for “dope.” They might lack food, clothing, warmth, decency, everything; but without cocaine they could not and would not live. This husband, strange to say, was a man of intelligence aud nice instincts. He wore glasses and had a fine brow. He was a carpenter by trade able to earn good wages until he got this habit. His wife, a shattered, shriveled, frantic creature (she was on the verge of the cocaine “leaps”), informed me with a certain pride that she hadsingle source of cocaine supply in New once been a famous dancer in the BlackYork city 480,000 doses of this dangerous drug were illegitimately dispensed every month.How is the habit usually acquired? “By accident, like other drug habits. I’m sorry to say that one of these—er —accidents is the presence of cocaine in catarrh medicines.” Dr. PodstataCrook company.In an adjoining hovel was a colored —a tall, lithe, wild-eyed victim, who said a dollar’s worth of cocaine was only enough for a few sniffs, it would scarcely last an hour.Pure cocaine, which is manufactured freely in various cities, is worth aboutproceeded to give me details in the 84 an ounce. That is what crooked I case of one of his patients, a man of 22, | cocaine merchants pay for it. Then hej who became a cocaine fiend quite inno-1 retails the drug by the little pink pill j cently by taking a widely advertised j b°x full, or the little blue bottle full,1 “catanh cure” that contained only a aDd by ibus subdividing it gets for eachsmall percentage of cocaine, but, alas, enough to establish the habit. The I young man sniffed his “catanh cure”I up his nose, and after each sniffing ex-1 perienced a characteristic sense of elation, a peculiar well being. He tookj more and more of the stuff and soon| discovered that his exhilaration came |ounce 820 or 825. That is, when he sells the stuff pure to those who want it for “hypos” and know the difference] but to the “sniffers” he sells the drug half adulterated with acetanilid, a very cheap powder that looks like cocaine, and allows him to double his gain. Sometimes these vulture retailers will work off on very desperate, half-crazedj from cocaine in the powder. Now, it ;was cocaine he wanted, not the catarrh two_thirds adulteration, which gives thecu?e; and presently he began to take dealers a profit of 860 an ounce! j the drug pure, sniffing it, after the man- No wonder a flashily-dressed negro,
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Leavenworth Echo
Leavenworth, Washington, US
Fri, May 12, 1911
Page 3
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Jennifer D.
USA 01 Jan 2024
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