PARIS DRUG TRAFFIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18459, 24 July 1923, Page 7

PARIS DRUG TRAFFIC.

MASS ; PROSECUTION. DOCTORS FOUND GUILTY. TERMS OF IMPRISONMENT. By Telegraph—Press Association— • (Received 9.30 p.m.) A. and N.Z. "'PARIS, July '22. The trial of 78 persons accused of conducting illicit traffic in drugs resulted in all the doctors and chemists among the accused 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 acted with a view to enabling victims of the drug habit to liberate themselves from the vice. ' • • - v ; ; ' Dr. Raoul Regnier was sentenced to two years'imprisonment., Two other y doctors were sentenced to six months' imprisonment each and two others to three months. Three others, including a woman doctor, were fined. One chemist was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and another to four months. Thirtynine drug takers were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from three to ten months and fines tanging from 1000' to 3000 francs. ■ y * "It wouldneed the pen of a Maupassant to describe the horrors of the life stories revealed to the Court," stated a report describing the opening of the trial referred to in the above cablegram. "Every degree of the drug tyranny •is represented. There are men and women who stem unconscious of the degradation they have reached. Others are intellectuals, • evidently engaged in : a ce-seless struggle against temptation, y Some of the women are mere girls." This mass prosecution was the result of inquiries which began in 1921. It was shown , 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 customers.