WHOOPEE PARTIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1930, Page 15 (Supplement)

WHOOPEE PARTIES.

PAIN AND BAD COMPANY. OPIUM REPLACES COCKTAILS. MORE AND MORE WOMEN IN TOILS. (From Our New York Correspondent.) A cocktail no longer holds any fascination for whoopee seekers. Cigarettes have become so common among the girls that one who does not use them makes quite a sensation in either drawing room or office. And it's come to the place now where the only way a woman can shock the world is to smoke the opium pipe. Pipe parties are getting to be quite the thing, not only among theatrical folk, but also among the Upper Four Hundred, RaicLafter raid has been made in recent months on private apartments ranging from the 1000, dollar a month variety down to the 50 dollar a month one room, kitchenette, and bath. And more than one smoking set has been thrown out of fi convenient window when an unexpected ring or knock came at the door. It used to be that the only place a woman would ever be found smoking the pipe would be in Chinatown —with all the fixings of curtained bunks, kimonas, subterranean passages and yellow-skinned attendants. But that sort of thing is very old fashioned now. And the pipe is being passed around in groups of anywhere from three to a couple of dozen smokers, and dreams run rampant all over the place. At first raids were usually on low dives, where only men prisoners were taken. 'But gradually both the type of rendezvous and the class of offenders rose in. plane, until now these raids include some of the swankiest apartments in the city, and the pipe smokers are men and women of good breeding and great intellect. i Digging Up New Thrills.

There does not seem to be any one particular reason given by the addicts for their dereliction. Some say' boredom, others say nerve strain and overwork, others have had some tragedy in their lives that has robbed them of all desire to live and suffer further, and others simply "want to try something new, dig up a new thrill. United States Attorney Tuttle, chairman of the New York narcotic survey committee, sent a report on drug addiction to President Hoover's Commission on Law Enforcement a few weeks ago, in which he says that pain and bad company are the main causes among people of the upper' crust. The report considered the record of over one thousand drug addicts who were treated in one private hospital. These patients.included a thousand men and about five hundred women, and the main feature of the investigation was that more than 95 per cent of the addicts were victims either of opium or its | derivatives, or of opium in conjunction with other habit-forming drugs, and only seven-tenths of 1 per cent (approximately eight out of a thousand persons) were cocaine addicts. The report stresses the fact that all these victim? were persons of means who Lud not bu'jn committed ,to public or penal ihstitutions. The causes of addiction and the percentage of victims were given as follows:— fPhysical pain, ,24 per cent; bad association, '22 per cent; sickriess and indefinite pain, 19 per cent; mental strain, 18 per cent; and miscellaneous cause?, 17 per cent. The duration of addiction varied from one to forty-five years. Almost half the patients had been absorbing narcotics for five years or less. More than a ihird of the patients were professional men and women. v More than half were engaged in gainful occupations. And only 9 per cent were without employment. Spreading Faster Every Day. Only eighteen of the 1500 addicts were younger than 21 years. More than half were between 35 and 56. And 20 per cent were "backsliders," who had succumbed to narcotics again, after having been released from previous curative

3 treatments. J This is only a very small part of the , great hold the drug habit has over the population of the United States. 'And the practice of opium smoking especially is spreading farther and faster every ' day. ■' '' 1 11l August of this year approximately one ton of gum opium, contained in three ! large packing boxes, was seized by ' Federal agents in a raid. The seizure was one of the largest I made in New York in many monthp. The opium in its raw state and at wholesale ; prices was valued at 100,000 dollars, but would have brought a million dollars, if retailed in the bootleg market. And so it keeps coining into the country, sometimes detected, and sometimes not. And when a shipment gets by the ; authorities, then just so many more pipe parties can be thrown throughout the city and its attendant suburbs. Kaids are made in various ways. Sometimes girls who are suspects are trailed ..to their smoking rendezvous, as Avas the case with Alice Brown and May Martin —two chorus girls—some time ago. They were followed to {i sumptuous Chinese smoking room in Harlem, where' great supplies of opium were unearthed and several Chinese and white men arrested. Sometimes detectives are stationed outside of a suspected apartment,' while an official goes inside to make a search, as was the case not long ago when only one apartment in a certain building was under observation—but three different smoking sets were flung out of three different apartment windows, landing fair and square on the . outside men's heads, thereby, furnishing them with complete and conclusive evidence. Aiid sometimes admission is acquired 'through '■a: ruse of some sort, as was the case with one very luxurious den, where rings and knocks at the door came to no avail, but a detective on liis knees outside the door, mewing 'like a stray kitten, brought instant results. Raiding "Opium Parties." It is a dangerous business any way it is gone about. Last year more than one member of the narcotic squad came to grief through raids, one of the detective? losing an eye in. a mix-up. ' . ■ s I Of late there have been quite a number of, raids in New York and many in other large cities throughout the'country. In a Cincinnati hotel recenty two women were arrested for smoking ; the vpipe in their room. The- fumes from the opium had spread along the corridor, and the room was under observation for five hours was definitely decided that a raid was • justified. The prisoners were a Miss Ethel Day, 29 years old, and Mrs. Elsie Moran, 30. One hundred grains of opium and 200 grains of yenshee, an opium derivative, ready for use, were seized, together with a complete smoking outfit. 'The women had come to the hotel in a large car, presumably from Akron, O. They claimed that they had come to Cincinnati i-to buy opium. But the officials declared

that It wag' mor« likely that they had brought the stuff there themselves to dispose of it to Cincinnati' Women' smokers. In September of this year two raids carried out in an apartment at West 71st Street, New York, and coming within half an hour of each other, caused the arrest of Miss Joan Harris, aged 24, on a charge of possessing narcotics. Another carefully planned " opium party," in a lavishly furnished apartment near Riverside Drive oh 92nd' Street, proved disastrous . for two girk and a man who was helping them prepare the "refreshments" for the party when two detectives, who gained admission by a ruse, ; put. the ; three under arrest.- , ' So the habit grows and spreads. And more and more women are being dragged into it» toils.—(Anglo-American N.S. Copyright.)