"METH" SLAVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

"METH" SLAVES.

EVER-GROWING TOLL.

The strange lure of • methylated spirits is apparently growing In power. Official figures just published in Britain show that during Ust year the convictions for drunkenness due to this most nauseous drink had increased by 10 per cent, and it' is stated that the habit f is getting a stronger hold. London is, of course, the area in which there were the largest number of convictions, but .it is closely followed by Liverpool, Manchester, Hull) Cardiff and Swansea. . .

What exactly is the curious appeal that continually finds fresh addicts- is difficult to explain, since methylated spirit is anything but palatable. It is exceedingly potent, containing no less than 68 per cent of alcohol, and to restrain people from consuming it the fluid is coloured by the addition of pyridine (which gives it a violet hue) and 3 per cent of naphtha— a particularly nauseous liquid—is added. There is no restriction on its sale, however, except that it cannot be sold after 8 o'clock at night or on Sundays. Most druggists hesitate to supply any considerable quantity if there is any ground; for suspecting that it is intended for drinking purposes. And there are far more addicts to the habit than even the official statistics concerning men and women who are locked up for intoxication indicate. A South London chemist said that, he has often been asked for it by women who bore on their faces the hallmark of the drunkard. "I invariably refuse to supply it in quantities," he said, "and one customer, when I declined to supply, broke into tears. She told me frankly that she had a perpetual craving for it, and that ic was life itself to her: I refused again, and she left in high dudgeon. I knew, of course, that she would be able to buy the stuff at an oil shop."; • A detective gave stories of several ease* that have passed' through his hands in which the accused were victims of the methylated habit. "Ask the keepers of any public park or the ranger of any common, and they will tell you that it is not uncommon to'find empty bottles redolent of the offensive odour of methylated spirits. Evidently the-contents had been swallowed and the depleted bottle thrown away. "The effects of drinking the stuff are woeful. The victims, of the habit grow excited as the eaters of lmlii«l», dream strange dreams, and see weird virions. And the mentality and moral powers decline, till the addicts fall into the most deplorable hell on earth. '■ "The stuff is cheap, and this may account partly for the' prevalence of the habit; but addicts have assured me ft»4t once they have acquired the tast* it holds them with -the tenacity of a bird of ill omen. One by on* the virtue* disappear: All sense of responsibility and of right ynH wrong vanishes. Th* man or. woman is transformed Into awreck of humanity." Exhilaration far a while and then a period of intense depression is the way m which a doctor'dacribed the effects of the liquid. "And," he went on, "the habit once formed is difficult to cure. I suppose it should beplaced amongst the.articles of commerce which are difficult' to obtain; only it is ased fer ao many proper pnr> pcttß that ldsislstion along such hnas appearsimpoasSdi, ;