COCAINE AGAIN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 27 October 1924, Page 6

COCAINE AGAIN.

YOUNG WOMAN IN GRIP. MANY ADDICTS. SYDNEY, October 17. Interest in the spreading traffic in cocaine in New South Y ales has been aroused again by a story which was hinted at-in a Sydney paper this week. It concerns a young woman of good parents, who has had a particularly successful scholastic career, and was looked upon to have a brilliant future. About six mouths ago she disappeared suddenly, and it was three months before her people could locate her again. They say she was under the protection of a man, who heretofore has been unknown to them. Her parents claim that she was under the influence of a drug, and that she was kept under its influence by the man with whom they found lier. She returned home with them, stayed one night, but was gone in the morning, and they concluded that the craving for the drug had been too much for her. Another three months passed • before they traced her again, and on the second occasion the police found her in the company of the same man. She was not under the influence of the drug on this occasion, and denied that she was in the habit of taking it, or had been supplied with it by the an an concerned. A charge was made against her to keep her under control, but the police were powerless to detain the man. Hardly had the effect of that story passed when the police recovered what they took to be a large quantity of cocaine. '♦lt was found in a house which the detectives raided in Surrey Hills, and was contained in a large glass jar labelled “cocaine.” There were also several brown paper packets of the same white powder. Analysis, however, proved it to be nothing more harmful than boracic powder. But the police ave<r that it had been retailed as cocaine, and they state that there is a great. trade clone by unscrupulous persons who sell the pseudo cocaine to l drug addicts.. So far gone are many of | them that they will snap at any chance of more supplies, and so they'pay big prices for what turns out to be boracic powder or some similar article.

Discussing the traffic, a police officer who:has: handled many of the worst addicts, made the startling declaration that the cocaine traffic was growing by leaps and bounds. “Opium in China is. nothing to what the cocaine habit will be-in New South Wales in the space of two years,” lie said. “The law- is so lax at present that the police are really powerless to prevent the trailing, which is carried on secretly for the. most part. I know of my own experience that a. large percentage of the that an amazing percentage of the young men and women of the present generation are becoming addicts of the drug. They will do- anything to get it, and its menace is greater than 1 can state.” ‘

Though the trade was, for the most part secret,- he said there was one man who trafficked in ah open manner. In the guise of an organ-grinder he visits various localities where he knows his customers reside, and .stated tunes he sings announces his arrival. On the pretence of paying him for his music the. addicts get their “snow.” “His visits are as regular as the milkman,” tli6 officer said, “Anyone who has any knowledge to the extent to which the drug is used in Sydney will admit that a life sentence is too lenient for the trafficker. Yet the law only provides a penalty of £20.”