HIGH STRAIN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 4 October 1926, Page 2

HIGH STRAIN.

DRUGS FOR TIRED GAMBLERS. SOCIETY WOMEN IN GRIP OF “SNOW.” LONDON, Sept. 21. Nerve-shattered by the strain .of gambling and amusement on the Riviera, society women are increasingly becoming drug-fiends, and smugglers expect record pickings in the coming season. It is anticipated that the authorities will take more stringent action in view of the public outcry. The drug habit in Riviera is becoming increasingly prevalent, says the Nice correspondent of the Daily News, and the vendors are anticipating a golden harvest during the coming winter season, but public consternation at the growth of the evil may compel the authorities to take more active measures. The police confess that the existing legislation is futile. “If we had to arrest all the drug-sellers,” they say, ‘ ‘ there would not be room in the prisons throughout France to accommodate them. We can only confiscate their stocks and expel the vendors.’ Drug fiends at present are able to obtain for 50 francs sufficient “snow’ for two or three sniffs, representing a “habitual’s” half-hour’s supply. The principal customers are society women, nerve-shattered by the incessant high gambling and dancing and a surfeit of bad champagne. The drugs are smuggled from Marseilles, and also via the mountain passes from Italy. The chief distributors include a man and his daughter, living in superb apartments in the principal thoroughfare and who are received in the best society. But the actual vendors are the managers and attendants of highclass liquor bars, women attendants m the cloak-rooms of the theatres, casinos and hotels de luxe, and hawkers of necklaces, scarves and postcards. One shop in Nice, purporting to sell Japanese goods, specialises in the sale ox opium, and contains a room where patrons indulge in opium smoking.