THE COCAINE DANGER.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 239, 6 October 1916, Page 8

THE COCAINE DANGER.

To all who are familiar with the spread of the cocaine habit in the United States and elsewhere (writes Professor A. K. Cushny in the "Times") the present situation in this country is full of anxiety. It is true that cocaine has long been employed as a habitual stimulant in isolated cases in England, but it now threatens to involve wide circles. Cocaine is at once the most insidious and the most dangerous of all the habitforming drugs. Its use has often been begun in perfect innocence to relieve some local discomfort in the eyes, nose or throat, and its victims do not recognise how much they have become dependent on its action on the brain until an attempt is made to abandon it. when they suffer from an intolerable depression which drives them back to the drug for relief. No surgeon would prescribe chloroform for a patient to inhale at his discretion, and cocaine should be subject to even stricter limitations. If the sale of cocaine to the public is prohibited altogether, we should avoid a danger with out inflicting hardship on anyone except the victims of the habit, and without impairing'medical practice.