May Prosecute Itinerant Drug Dispenser

1914

Broadly speaking, no one who is not a registered pharmacist may sell drugs legally.

Under this provision of the code officers may prosecute the traveling man who is reported to be visiting this city twice a week to sell preparations containing morphine, cocaine or other habit-forming drugs to young men and boys, unless he is a registered pharmacist.

When poisons are sold they must be labeled.

Officers are doing all in their power to check the sale of various preparations called "snow" by the drug victims. Appeals of mothers whose boys are becoming physical wrecks have been made and it is the determination of all the officers to enforce strictly all laws, whether state or interstate, which prohibit the sale of opium, morphine and cocaine.

Many Hideous Wrecks

Police officers and other observant persons give graphic descriptions of the suffering of drug fiends. Many boys and young men are but shadows of their former selves, their bodies are covered with sores where the hypodermic needle has been injected, and they are losing their mental, moral and physical stamina. In many instances the needle wounds have become infected, but this fact does not deter the victims from injecting the morphine or cocaine into other parts of the body.

The craving for strong drink is nothing compared with the craving for drugs after the habit has once been formed, and the chances for cure are very slight.

Because of these deplorable facts — because of the widespread and growing use of drugs — the public is aroused. The people demand the strict enforcement of all present laws and, if they be inadequate, the passage of new provisions which will increase the difficulty of young men to procure the "snow."

—Waterloo Evening Courier, Waterloo, Iowa, Jan. 16, 1914, p. 3.