DRUG HORRORS

Northern Advocate, 24 July 1923, Page 5

DRUG HORRORS

GANG BROUGHT TO BOOK.

MEDICAL MEN INVOLVED.

SALUTARY CHASTISEMENT

(Received 9.10 a.m.)

PARIS, July 23.

The dopo traffic trial resulted in all the doctors and chemists being found guilty of delivering practically unlimited quantities of morphine and other drugs..

The Court declined to accept the defence that the doctors and chemists had acted with a view to enabling victims of the drug habit to liberate themselves from their vice 3.

Dr. Raoul Regnier was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, two other doctors 1.0 six months each, two to three months each and three others, including a woman doctor, were heavily fined. One chemist was sentenced to six months and another to four months, while 39 drug takers were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from throe to ten months and lines of 1000 to .*>ooo frants.—>A. and N.Z.

A message from 'Paris on April 10 stated: "The Tenth Correctional Court, was., the scene of the trial of 78 per; sons concerned in the dope traffic. The accused, of whom 31 are women, include nine doctors, six chemists, and "Fat" Raoul, known as the cocaine "king" of Montmarte. It would need the pen of a Maupassant to describe the horrors of the life stories revealed to the Court. Every degree of the dope tyranny is lepresented. There arc men and women who seem unconscious of the degradation they reached. Others are intellectuals, evidently engaged in a ceaseless struggle against temptation. Some of the women are mere girls. This mass prosecution is the result of inquiries commencing in 1921, which showed that certain doctors and chemists were selling cocaine without making entries in the poison register and deliberately overlooking the evidence of fraud on the part of the dopers.