TAKING DRUGS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23085, 9 July 1938, Page 20

TAKING DRUGS

HUSBAND AND WIFE FALSE PRESCRIPTIONS USED FIGHT AGAINST THE HABIT A young married couplo appeared on summons before Mr. C. R. Orr Walker, S.M., in tlie Police Court yesterday on two charges of obtaining from Auckland chemists quantities of a certain drug by falsely representing that prescriptions purporting to be signed by doctors were good and valid prescrip tious for the tablets containing the drug. Both pleaded guilty. Sub-Inspector Flanagan said the husband had lived for a time in a foreign country, where lie had started taking quantities of a certain drug. He had married and his wife had cultivated the habit. They had li"ed for a time in another part of Now Zealand, where, on a doctor's prescription, they were allowed a greater amount of the drug than they could obtain when they came to live in Auckland. The husband had made out false prescriptions, signed the names of doctors to them and obtained quantities of the drug by presenting the prescriptions to local chemists. Doctor's Treatment Considerable progress, Mr. Flanagan continued, was being made in their treatment, which had been undertaken by an Auckland doctor. They wero both respectable citizens and the husband was in a good professional position.

Evidence that both the husband and wife were making every effort to assist him in his treatment was given by the doctor concerned. When they arrived in Auckland, he said, they were each taking three and a-half grains of the drug a day. The Health Department advised trying three grains a day and, by their confidence and courage, this amount had been substantially reduced. They were at present taking one and a-half grains a day. He suggested that, the position might be assisted if nil order was made that their names should not' be published. Magistrate's Comment

Stating that no one else was involved in tho offences, tho magistrate ordered tho names to be suppressed. Both were convicted and ordered to come up for sentence if called upon within six months. The magistrate directed them to obey the orders of the medical officer appointed by the Health Department and ordered them to pay Bs, witnesses' expenses.