Cost Of U.S. Narcotics Addiction “Staggering”
(Rec. 10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Dec. 17. A California crime expert said today that American narcotics addicts pay about 2,757.500.000 dollars (about £1,231,000.000) a year to a “world crime syndicate” for heroin, much of which comes from Communist China. The estimate was given by Mr Robert Neeb, chairman of the Southern California Committee on Crime Prevention. He testified before a Senate Judiciary sub-committee on juvenile delinquency, which the chairman, Senator Estes Kefauver (Democrat. Tennessee), said wanted to learn what constructive steps could be taken to improve the treatment programme for juvenile drug addiction Mr Neeb said the problem could not be overcome simply by imposing stiff prison sentences on addicts and peddlers.
He told the sub-committee the average heroin addict spent about 50 dollars a day for the narcotics. He estimated there were 150.000 such addicts in the United States.
Mr Neeb said that one out of four Californian crimes could be traced directly or indirectly to narcotics and these narcotics-connected crimes cost his State 100.000.000 dollars a year, including the cost of prosecutions. He said the total cost to the United States must be staggering. The most deadly of the narcotics, almost pure heroin, came to the United States west coast from Communist China.
“It is well known that heroin of almost pure strength became a principal export of the Communists from Red China, that the manufacture and export of enslaving drugs has been vigorously encouraged by the Communists where they gained control of satellites,” Mr Neeb said. “Drug addiction in the free nations is a subtle and diabolical form of conquest in which the victims pay for their own enslavement,” he added. Mr Neeb proposed cutting off United States foreign aid to countries which did not enter effective agreements to halt the manufacture and illegal export of narcotics.
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Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28155, 19 December 1956, Page 15
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305Cost Of U.S. Narcotics Addiction “Staggering” Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28155, 19 December 1956, Page 15
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