Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 155, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1913 — Doctor Hurty Talks On the Anti-Dope Law. [ARTICLE]

Doctor Hurty Talks On the Anti-Dope Law.

Dangers of acquiring a drug habit from taking sleeping powders; the effects of the anti-drug law passed by the last legislature and interesting sidelights on dope fiends are treated in a special article given the United Press by Dr. J. N. Hurty, state health commissioner. Dope fiends are scarce, probably not to exceed one person in a thousand, says Dr. Hurty. But the number of those who occasionally take Sleeping potions and who are constantly on the verge of becoming drug addicts is not small, he declares. “Since the going into effect of the Indiana law which so well controls the sale of narcotics,” Dr. Hurty states, “the dope fiends have appeared numerously at the board of health office telling their pitiful stories. Many made sick" through deprivation of their particular drug have landed in the city hospital. "All of these cases are found to be persons who are of no earthly use to society. They are parasites upon others, and, if deprived of their drug even one doling period, will lie, beg or steal to get it. One man, 60 years old, said he had taken morphine for 40 years, and for the last 20 years 20 grains a day. A medicinal dose is one-eighth to onefourth grain, two grains being almost certainly fatal. Yet here was ,a case, and there are many, When 10 times the fatal d<> ;e was actually required daily to keep 'body and soul together, showing the wonderful power of the human body to adapt itself to poisons and even growing into a condition which demanded poison. “This man, though in good flesh, had heavy eyes, slow speech and movement, a furtive, evasive and suspicious mahner. He declared a doctor led him into the habit and laid some blame on his wife, who didn’t ‘take good care’ of him when he was sick. His wife rented out rooms and sewed a little for their support. She refuses to take morphine, the doper said. His dope cost about 20 cents a day and his old wife earned the money. For 40 years he had been dependant upon his wife. The fallen man could not in fairness attribute his fall to the doctor, for he confessed the latter particularly warned against selfdosing. ' 1 . ‘The anti-dope law will keep away dope from the fiends for a while, but they will finally get it somehow, for experience has proven we can keep dope fiends from dope by imprisoning them, but if they are loose they will certainly get their dppe/ ‘The heavy hand of heredity is upon dope fiends. They were born with unstable minds and weak wills. There a« exceptions, but they are few. It is not the drug which causes these qualities to appear, because the dope fiends were weak stuff in the beginning.”