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.

Morphiomania – An Addiction, Must Have Morphine or Opium

1878

Morphiomania

Morphiomania has become a great scourge in Berlin since the introduction of opium injections as a relief from bodily suffering and sleeplessness.

Tradespeople, merchants, judges, barristers, soldiers, students, doctors and clergymen become the victims of the habit, and when the medical attendants are called in it is too late to counteract the evil.

At first, these subcutaneous injections offer the quickest and easiest means to allay pain and bring rest to the sufferer. But to prove effectual in its cure, the treatment must be continued for a certain time; and during that period the patient becomes so accustomed to these skin injections that they become indispensable. When the medical practitioner refuses to increase the doses, the patient unable to sleep or rest without the calming injection, procures the necessary instruments and applies the remedy himself.

Sometimes, also, even after the patient has been cured without any undue doses, and when he should dispense with the opium injections, he delays doing so under the plea that they make sleep and rest so well. In fact, when once these subcutaneous injections have begun, they can rarely be left off. Like drink, the appetite for them increases until chronic drunkenness ensues.