Heroin

“ My investigations soon showed me that heroin is three times as strong as morphine in its action, and for that reason its use sets up definite tolerance more quickly than any other form of opiate. For the same reason it shows more quickly a deleterious effect upon the human system, the mental, moral and physical deterioration of its takers being more marked than in the case of any other form of opiate. ”

“ Unofficial estimates place the number of narcotic addicts in the United States at about 50,000. The average heroin addict requires something like ten grains per day to satisfy his needs. This means that over a period of a year the average heroin addict will use about 7.6 ounces of the drug—or a total for all addicts of about 380,000 ounces of heroin or a substitute drug. In their best years, Federal and state law enforcement officers have been able to seize only a fraction of this estimated total. ”

“ The explosive upsurge in the use of mind-altering drugs by middle-class Americans in the past decade has been a conspicuous and much-discussed phenomenon of our times. Beginning in the mid-1960's and peaking, perhaps, about 1970, the use of marijuana, LSD, and even heroin has taken on the character of an epidemic, not only among the young but among many citizens of mature years. ”

“ One respected work on narcotics makes the claim, without further elaboration, that 'recent information' leads to the conclusion that some illicit laboratories used for the conversion of opium or morphine into heroin are located in the United States. ”

“ Drug fiends are apparently able to consume relatively large quantities of morphin or cocain, but any sudden and material increase in the amount of heroin taken is liable to prove fatal. As indicating the wide sale of this substance, it is known that one druggist in Pennsylvania whose store is located in an undesirable section of his city has been buying heroin tablets in 25,000 lots. ”

“ On the possibility of clandestine manufacture of heroin from opium, morphine, and codeine, see supra, n. 15.↑ See supra, n. 15.↑ Using figures on the number of known addicts and the average daily dose, federal agencies estimate that roughly 1,500 kilograms of heroin are smuggled into the United States each year. Task Force Report 6. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs estimates that no more than about one kilogram of heroin could have been produced if all the opium stolen in any recent year had been clandestinely converted into heroin. ”

“ The addicted judge, or the addicted physician, or the addicted clergyman, or the addicted man of business or other affairs, or the addicted clerk or industrial worker reacts differently to the sufferings and trials of narcotic drug addiction than does the addict of the underworld, or the heroin “sniffer” of idle and curious adolescence, or the addicted defective, degenerate, or criminal. Also he reacts differently to everything else. What is true of one man who has opiate addiction may be absolutely false of another. One narcotic addict is honest, competent, truthful and intelligent. ”

“ My theory used to be that most addicts were old enough to be associated with criminals and get into the underworld with addicts before they themselves became addicts. Today, in certain localities, we have young people, some minors, and the pattern seems to be experimentation in marijuana first. That loses its thrill and those persons become addicts to heroin. Sometimes cocaine comes into the picture. ”

“ The drugs chiefly used are cocaine, opium, laudanum, morphine and heroin. These drugs are much more destructive than alcohol. Cocaine and heroin are the worst. It is very difficult to stop using any of them once the habit has been formed. Nearly every "fiend" dies directly or indirectly from the effect of his particular drug. Every one weakens the body so that there is not much resistance to offer to acute diseases. Every one destroys the will power so that a cure is exceedingly difficult. ”

“ Drugs are even taking hold upon our youth. Within the year many instances have been cited in the newspapers, which have uncovered peddlers of cocaine and heroin to school children. I listened recently to the appalling story of a seventeen-year-old Connecticut boy, brought by his father for treatment in this city, who told how he had been the center of a group of not less than a hundred other boys in his own town who gained the drug through him and were completely at his mercy. ”

“ Though at present the spread of heroin addiction appears to be once more confining itself to low-income groups and LSD has become less fashionable among the experimental-minded, certainly marijuana has established itself as an almost universal drug used regularly by millions of Americans, and use of more potent mind-alterers remains heavy if no longer greatly accelerating. ”

“ It may be admitted that to prescribe a single dose, or even a number of doses, may not bring a physician within the penalties of the act; but what is here charged is that the defendant physician by means of prescriptions has enabled one, known by him to be an addict, to obtain from a pharmacist the enormous number of doses contained in 150 grains of heroin, 360 grains of morphine, and 210 grains of cocaine'-3,000 ordinary doses! ”

“ The price, supply, and quality vary widely; [31] the market fluctuates with the ability of smugglers to outwit customs and narcotics agents at home and abroad. [32] The facts concerning heroin are available from many sources, frequently in the popular media. 'Common sense' (Leary v. United States, supra, 395 U.S. at 46, 89 S.Ct. at 1553) tells us that those who traffic in heroin will inevitably become aware that the product they deal in is smuggled, [33] unless they practice a studied ignorance to which they are not entitled. ”

“ Among the poisons which must be kept out of the body should be mentioned habit-forming drugs, such as opium, morphine, cocain, heroin, chloral, acetanilid, alcohol, caffein, and nicotin. The best rule for those who wish to attain the highest physical and mental efficiency is total abstinence from all substances which contain poisons, including spirits, wine, beer, tobacco, many much-advertised patent drinks served at soda-water fountains, most patent medicines, and even coffee and tea. ”

“ Fifth, the flow of legally imported opium and of legally manufactured morphine and codeine is controlled too tightly to permit any significant possibility that heroin is manufactured or distributed by those legally licensed to deal in opium, morphine, or codeine. ”

“ Many politicians now feel that the cost of caring for a modest increase in the number of addicts is a reasonable trade-off for a significant anticipated drop in the crime rate in their communities by removing the high cost of obtaining heroin. ”

“ The Antikamnia tablets in this original ounce package contain no acetanilid, antifebrin, antipyrin, alcohol, morphin, opium, codein, heroin, cocain, alpha- or beta-eucain, arsenic, strychnin, chloroform, cannabis indica or chloral hydrate.
Truly, Satan is appearing as an angel of light. What a gratification it is to the long exploited profession to know that Antikamnia contains no alcohol, no chloroform, no cannabis indica, no chloral hydrate. ”

“ It is really morphine treated with acetic acid which renders it more powerful than morphine alone.”
“How do they take them? What’s the effect?” I asked.
“The person who uses heroin usually powders the tablets and snuffs the powder up the nose,” he answered. “In a short time, perhaps only two or three weeks, one can become a confirmed victim of ‘happy dust.’ And while one is under its influence he is morally, physically and mentally irresponsible.”
Kennedy was putting away the paraphernalia he had used, meanwhile talking about the drug. ”

“ The prevalent drug is heroin; the central figure is the junkie; and the literary emphasis is upon a life style of existential alienation—a Romantic submergence in the drug subculture.
2. The Rock 'n Roll Flower Children of the 1960's. The prevalent drugs are marijuana and LSD; the central figure is the youthful student hippie; and the literary emphasis is upon experiential politics and social philosophy—the emergence of a "counter-culture" which challenges the dominant culture. ”

“ Illicit drugs: widespread harvesting of small, wild plots of marijuana and qat (chat) ; most locally consumed; transit country for Southwest Asian heroin moving to West Africa and onward to Europe and North America ”

“ the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or the man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes till ninety-five? One passes his twenty-four months in eternity. All the years of the beef-eater are lived only in time. ”

“ But the worst of it all is that through the carelessness of physicians, and sometimes through their criminal pretentions, habits are formed for certain drugs, such as cocaine, opium and its products, chloral and alcohol, which enslave their victims, weaken their vitality, and invite disease. I think I do not exaggerate it when I say that the drug habit, no matter how induced, is a menace to the American people. ”

“ To express this somewhat differently—a narcotic drug addict is an individual in whose body the continued administration of opiate drugs has established a physical reaction, or condition, or mechanism, or process which manifests itself in the production of definite and constant symptoms and signs and peculiar and characteristic phenomena, appearing inevitably upon the deprivation or material lessening in amount of the narcotic drug, and capable of immediate and complete control only by further administration of the drug of the patient’s addiction. ”

“ Three men, one under the effects of alcohol, one under the effects of opium, and the last under the effects of hemp, arrived one night at the closed gates of a city. “Let us break down the gates,” said the alcohol drinker in a fury of rage, “I can do it with my sword!” “Nay,” said the opium eater, “We can rest here outside in comfort till the morning, when the gates will be opened, and we may enter.” “Why all this foolish talk?” whined the one under the effects of hemp. “Let us creep in through the key-hole. We can make ourselves small enough!” ”

“ Later I realized the fact that the blame rested almost entirely upon the shoulders of my medical inefficiency and my lack of understanding and ability to observe and interpret. The narcotic addict as a rule will co-operate and will suffer if necessary to the limit of his endurance. Demanding co-operation of a [Pg 7] completely developed case of opiate addiction during and following incompetent withdrawal of the drug is asking a man to co-operate for an indefinite period in his own torture. There is a well-defined limit to every one’s power of endurance of suffering. ”

“ The many wrecks of addicts to be seen trying through insufficient supply of narcotic drug, self-poisoned with other drugs which they have purchased, alcohol, bromides, coal tar products, cocaine, and of late hyoscine—their addiction disease unrelieved and undiminished—are sufficient argument against mere reduction of dose, below physical body need. ”

“ Whatever or whoever the narcotic addict was before his use of opiate drugs—whatever had been the character and circumstances of the initial administration of narcotic drug—after a time, as I have repeatedly written elsewhere, after addiction-disease has once developed, the history of every opiate addict is that of suffering and of struggle. ”

“ First of all, let it be clearly understood that the addiction which I shall discuss is limited strictly to opium and its derivatives; first, because my own experience is limited to this group and, second, because much that I shall have to say does not apply to all so-called habit-forming drugs to an equal extent, and to some of them not at all. Addiction as thus limited is as true a disease as any with which the human body is afflicted. ”

“ The fact that a patient is using an opiate drug, and that he uses, within reasonable limits, a larger or smaller amount of that drug, is a matter of very minor importance as compared with his general functional, nutritional, and metabolic efficiency. This is true as a general proposition in the handling of any case of narcotic drug addiction, and is vastly more true in the handling of cases of other conditions or diseases, operative or otherwise, that are complicated by narcotic drug addiction-disease. ”

“ We shall save much public money, and personal effort and time, and shall save the narcotic addict much suffering and discouragement, and shall add much to human health, competency and happiness when we realize these facts as applied to addiction-disease, and proceed upon them in a spirit of broad humanity and of rational clinical study and remedy of obvious disease symptomatology. Narcotic drug addiction-disease is a definite, and in most cases arrestable disease. ”

“ In a majority of cases by experienced choice of clinical procedure, combined with judgment and technical skill, the arrest of addiction-mechanism and the restoration of the narcotic addict to health and freedom from both opiate need and thought of opiate drug is a matter of assured accomplishment attended by little if any nervous strain and physical suffering. ”

“ It has yet to be demonstrated that there is any warm-blooded animal, which following sufficiently prolonged and constant administration of opiate drug, is immune to the development of the symptomatology and constant physical phenomena of addiction-disease.
Color, nationality, social or economic position, age, mental and moral attributes of whatever sort are no bar to the development of the condition. These may influence, of course, the conduct and incidental manifestations of the individual addicted, just as they do in any other condition. ”

“ Among the most potent influences are worry, fear and physical suffering. They consume physical fuel; and an important part of the addict’s physical fuel is the drug of his addiction. In addition to this, worry and fear and suffering are also markedly inhibitory of glandular and [Pg 69] peristaltic function. The expenditure of energy in mental and muscular work also calls for increased supply of the drug of addiction. I need not enlarge upon this important fact. Its application to the handling and treatment of the addict is evident. ”