The Cocaine Habit.

White Ribbon, Volume 15, Issue 176, 16 February 1910, Page 9

The Cocaine Habit.

During last Juiy “The News, of Toronto, exposed an uncanny cocaine traffic in that city. To the reporters, who spent months in careful ingratiation into haunts, manners, and vernacular of cocaine fiends, two “ pard peddlars owned to having 360 customers. Ihe cocaine peddlars, by some means, procure their stock in trade from unscrupulous druggists, and then go out to the corners and alleys P.nd distribute the stuff to the cocaine victims. The common method of taking the drug is to inhale it as one would snuff. bile cocaine produces a sensation of indescribable happiness, it takes away the appetites and the power to sleep, lo get over this insomnia the cocaine user resorts to some other drug that will act as a narcotic. “ The News says :“ An alarming feature of the investigation was the discovery that almost every w ellknown local criminal was addicted to the habit. When ‘lit up’ by the drug, these men become seized with tits of recklessness, during which their inclinations for evil seem to have full sway. 1 lius they become a danger. . . The reporters had little trouble in finding girls who were addicted to the habit of taking cocaine. In a little Chinese restaurant on York street, near the corner of Queen street, they saw it for themselves.”

It is needless to add that the use of cocaine leads to horrible results. < hie dying man told the reporters of his experience when he swore ofl for five days. He (-aid : It’s no use swearing off though, once you hit it. 1 didn’t live those five days. It was hell. ... It looks as if this was the last. I haven’t eaten anything for two weeks, except a little fruit. The fellows buy me some whisky and some truck (cocaine) that keeps me going.”

When the people go to sleep it's the preacher who needs to he awakened. You can no more measure a sin by its size than a tree by its seed. 'We Christians must not sit by and let the tires of intemperance burn on ; we must not permit poverty to shiver and squalor to send forth its stench and disease to fester in the heart of great populati >ns. All th.s must bo stooped, and we are the Christ-men and the< ’liristwomen to stop it, or else we are pitiable dreamers and deluded professors of what we do not believe. — France* F. H illard,