Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1913 — BLAME PLACED ON PHYSICIANS [ARTICLE]

BLAME PLACED ON PHYSICIANS

Growth of Drug Habit in United Btatea Alleged to Be Due to Opiatea Ordered In Prescriptions. That 99 per cent of all the cocaine and morphine manufactured in this country is used by persons who have formed the drug habit through physicians’- prescriptions is the startling statement made by Dr L. P. Kebler, Chief of the Division of Drugs, Department of Agriculture. This statement, and others, proving that physicians and not “patent” medicines are responsible for the appalling growth of drug addiction in the United States was made by Dr. Kebler in an address at Washington, before the American Society for the Study of Alcohol and Narcotics. Dr. Kebler is quoted by Washington papers as having declared that drug using had increased 100 per cent, in the last 40 years, and that American medical men were not discriminating enough in their use of opiates. Their overindulgence to their patients, he said, is creating thousands of drug users every year. “It is a very sad thing to say that our physicians are doing the greatest work in promoting the use of cocaine and morphine,” said the doctor. “State laws are not saving the public from the grip of the drug habitj and the American public is sinking tighter and tighter into the black abyss of the morphine and cocaine fiend. “The worst of it is that the importation of opium into the country is becoming larger and larger year by year. I have heard it said on reliable authority that 99 per cent, of the cocaine and morphine manufactured in this country is used by persons who have formed the habit through doctors’ prescriptions.” Almost simultaneously with Dr. Kohler's address, Dr. J. A. Patterson, at Grand Rapids, Michigan, in a public statement said that 19 out of every 20 patients who come to an institution with which he is connected for treatment for the drug habit owe their downfall to physicians’ prescriptions.