AN ABODE OF “MANIACS”

Dunstan Times, Issue 3146, 4 December 1922, Page 5

AN ABODE OF “MANIACS”

PHILADELPHIA MOURNS HER LOST SOULS.

According to i lie Philadelphia "Public Ledger," eighty drug addicts and traffickers were arrested in that city in two days—August 31 and September 1. of this year, ’’The shrieks of the drug-craving prisoners made the room sound like an abode of maniacs” says the report. Addicts and traffickers were of both sexes, and the accommodation of four police stations was so greatly overtaxed that many prisoners had to be accomodated in the sheriff's room on the seventh floor of the central station. This is just one of the things that Prohibition has done for America. That a two-day police drive in one city could bt; responsible for the arrest of eighty drug-fiends points to a stale of affairs appalling to contemplate. It Is a medical truism that of all human ladings the drug habit is the most soul-killing, the most debasing the hardest to eradicate. Yet it is the very habit to which the efforts of wellmeaning but misguided fanatics have impelled the people of the United stales. The event of Prohibition marked the beginning of a period ot national demoralisation which is at present giving pause even to the most enthusiatic supporters of the ’•dry” laws. They find themselves enmeshed in a coil of their own unconscious weaving; they have conjured into being a hydra-headed monster which is eating the national soul alive.

Supposing, for a moment, that the police of this country instituted a campaign to-morrow for the arrest of drug addicts and traffickers. What would bo the probable result ? Would it lead to the apprehension of eighty—or eight—or even one offender? No New Zealander believes in such a possibility, knowing that we are naturally sound and healthy We are sound and healthy because we have a regulated liquor trade, by the operations of which we may obtain healthy stimulants in reasonable quantities. Let us not heat "shrieks ot drug craving prisoners" echoing through this sane, healthy Dominion. Vote Continuance, and keep the drug habit and other unnatural perversions out of the country.