Drug

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

a name applied to all articles term should, perhaps , be strictly confined to what are called simples, balsams, gums, resins, and exotic products used as medicaments in a dry state. DRUG ADDICTION. Drugs resulting in formation of habits are numerous, but the main ones are usually morphine and other products of opium, and alcohol. The latter is rarely in cluded under this head. The practice of injecting drugs did not come into use in Europe until after the invention of the hypodermic needle in 1845. After that time it spread through Europe and America with great rapidity until it was estimated in 1893, there were 100,000 cases of morphinomaniacs in Paris alone. Its use in the United States was widespread largely because of the increasing Chinese population and the ease with which opium was imported. The cocaine habit is of more recent growth, but when it started, hardly forty years ago, its progress was amazingly rapid. For a time it was spread by its excessive use in patent medicines, and doctors' prescriptions. Caffeine, a drug which in its effects resembles closely cocaine, is present in tea and coffee and makes their excessive use harmful to the nervous system. The effect of the use of tobacco is a more disputed point, but there seems to be agreement that its use tends to promote hardening of the arteries and increased blood pressure. Drugs, such as chloral and veronal, are used to induce sleep and are almost equally injurious as morphine in their effects upon the nervous system. Acetanilid and antipyrin are drugs used in the preparation of many patented headache relievers and their continued use is certain to produce anæmia and weakness of the heart. Attempts to remedy this spread of the use of drugs have been earnest and in some measure effective. Most important of all has been the outlawry of the opium trade by an agreement between nearly all the civilized nations of the world. In the United States a federal law placing a prohibitive tax upon all United narcotics imported into the States, over and above that which is needed for medical purposes, has been passed. Many State laws, some, especially that of New York, very stringent in their provisions, have been enacted. Drug stores are compelled to make affidavit to the amount of narcotics in their possession and to issue them only upon doctors' prescriptions. The latter are also carefully watched in this particular and any widespread and continuous prescriptions of morphine may lead to a revocation of the doctor's license to practice. Nothwithstanding these measures, Dr. Copeland, Health Commissioner of New York, estimated that in the winter of 1918-1919, there were in the City of New York not less than 60,000 persons addicted in a serious way to the use of drugs. The United States was still importing 500,000 pounds of opium legally n and illegally, which was ten times as much in proportion as that imported by other countries. The business of securing and distributing opium and its progress is found almost entirely among people who are criminals in other respects, as it is found that drugs lead to crime much more frequently than crimes to drugs. The United States Health Service in 1919 reported an increase in the use of narcotics in twenty States. coarse and flimsy