DOPES AND DRUGS

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 5 September 1932, Page 8

DOPES AND DRUGS

! MENACE IN AUSTRALIA. "FAKE” PATENT MEDICINES. SYDNEY, Aug. 26. A ic-ase of considerable interest to chemists and druggists, as well as to medical men, has come before the court this week. Six men have been charged with making up and selling various patented medicines, thereby “conspiring to cheat and defraud the Sydney Importing Company, Limited,” and incidentally making a considerable amount of money for themselves. Their operations covered a long list of articles, including well known pills and soothing powders, and apparently they were just starting on salts. An interesting point came up in connection with the evidence regarding tlie pills. The Sydney manager for the proprietary was asked how he could distinguish the spurious from the genuine, and declined to answer, on the ground that he was “sworn to secrecy,” and if he disclosed the formula “it would jeopardise the company’s position all over the world.. However the matter will go before the higher Court, and no> doubt all the required information will be there. Meantime the people w T ho make a practice of consuming popular “remedies” on a large scale are invited to reflect upon the reactions of their system's to drugs compounded and sold under the joint auspices of a taxi driver, a printer, a cellarman and a commercial traveller.

A much more serious question has been opened up by the prominence that various forms of “dope” have attained lately. Last month a woman died at Newcastle after taking atophan tablets as a cure for rheumatism. Evidence produced at the inquest .showed that this drug is highly dangerous and that many doctors decline to prescribe it. By the way, the use of atophan was one of the charge's brought against a doctor by a Sydney weekly,, which has recently had to pay $2500 for the privilege of calling a medical man a quack and an imposter. But there seems to be no doubt that atophan is really a dangerous poison; and its use .should be more carefully restricted.

WOMAN ROBS CHEMISTS’ SHOPS.

However, there are other drugs about which there is even less room for difference in opinion, and these seem to be obtainable here without much difficulty, in spite of all. rules and regulations. Last month, a number of chemists’ shops were broken into, in various parts of 'Sydney, and drugs were stolen', while nothing else was touched; and the police found that the robberies were carried out by “a fashionably dressed woman in a sedan car.” Further investigations enabled them to connect the case with other attempts to obtain cocaine by means of forged prescriptions, and eventually the culprit was arrested. She proved to bo. the wife of a doctor, and a hopeless drug-addict, who finding her ordinary sources of supply cut off by the vigilance of the police, had tried to replenish her stock of cocaine by these illiict means. She is now in a mental hospital. FOUR CHINESE ARRESTED.

A few days ago four Chinese —two men and two women —were arrested at Wagga on a charge of “drug-runn-ing.’’ They had a large amount of opium in their possession, and as they were posing as tourists with a fine car and a large amount of money at their disposal, they had plenty of facilities for getting rid of the stuff. But opium is of more interest to the Chinese than to Europeans, and a more significant event was the sentence of another this week to twelve months’ hard labour for.having cocaine in his possession. The police regard this last offender as “a principal in the illicit cocaine trade,” and some importance [may be found to attach to his arrest. There is plenty of evidence to show that large amounts of cocaine and other demoralising drugs are brought into this country, principally from the East, by way of Darwin and Townsville, and distributed freely throughout all the centres of population, and the “World” has just begun a series of articles dealing with the whole subject and purporting to show—on the testimony of a man who was personally inveigled into the traffic —precisely how this evil work is carried on. If the “World’s” revelations even approximate to the truth, the police and the detective staffs in this country are facing a herculean task in their efforts to grapple with this “,many-headed monster” which is menacing the health and morality and sanity of many thousands throughout Australia to-day.—“ Auckland Star” correspondent.