PROHIBITION AND DRUGS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XX, Issue 1112, 3 August 1911, Page 22

PROHIBITION AND DRUGS.

In presenting the figures to show that there has been an increase in the use of drugs in the prohibition districts of New England (says the “Washington Post”), Dr. Cabot, of the Massachusetts General Hospital, has raised a question that should be of interest to the delegates to the International Opium Conference, which is soon to be held at Shanghai. Dr. Cabot makes this startling statement: — “ The moment you limit the use of alcohol you increase the use of drugs. Nothing is more sure than that men accustomed to the use of a’cohol will come to use morphine if alcohol is withheld.”

Dr. Cabot has pointed out that bis premise has been proved by developments in the south under prohibition. It is certain now, as it has al-

ways been, that it is impossible to legislate temperance into men. Where they are deprived of liquoi* by law they will seek some other stimulant.

Great improvement has been noted in the drinking habits of this country. The resorts of drunkenness are becoming fewer each year. Education rather than legislation has brought about this improvement. Where men are bent on their own ruin, they will accomplish it, despite air the laws that can ever be framed. If the general tendency under prohibition is to turn men to drugs, then education should be relied upon more and more, and legislative restrictions depended , upon less and less. Drinking is less fatal to a nation than the use of drugs. The one may be injurious, but the other is deadly.

If the international conference on the use of opium would look into the matter, it might find the relation of prohibition to the use of drugs a fertile field for valuable research.