Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1916 — WAR SORROWS DRIVING WOMEN TO USE OPIUM [ARTICLE]

WAR SORROWS DRIVING WOMEN TO USE OPIUM

Many London Society Folk Reported Addicted to Pipe and Other Drug Habits. TRAFFIC IS HARD TO CHECK Ring, Whose Operations Are WorldWide, Unchecked by Law—Use Moving-Picture Film Tins to Smuggle Into the United States. London. —A craze of opium smoking and the extensive use of other drugs, including cocaine, heroin and ether, has recently been taken up by London women of means and many in society and actresses as well. Eagerness to alleviate the terrible depression caused by the war has led many cultured women to seek the consolation of drugs, and this desire has been cultivated and exploited by a ring composed largely of Americans, who maintain opium dens on a luxurious scale in the West end. Thb activities of the ring are not confined to England. It is a serious business organization, world-wide in its ramifications. Managed by half a dozen principals it maintains established agencies throughout the East, particularly in China and India, and also all over the United States, with headquarters in New York. It is largely imported into New York by means of personal smuggling. One of the favorite methods of smuggling is to conceal the opium in tins containing moving picture films, which are not likely to be opened or to be even under suspicion. The films are shipped to certain firms who also conduct film trading agencies, but the drug scheme, as may be imagined, is the hugely profitable side of the venture. These oplumed films have been shipped in large quantities to New York and up to the present have escaped detection. Traffic Hard to Check. Another means employed is to have the opium cooked in pellets ready for use. Thousands of these pellets can be and are carried in the dresses or clothing of passengers to New York and shfely delivered to the headquarters of the -ring there. The men composing the ring have extensive acquaintance, and it is not exaggeration to say that during the last few months scarcely a steamship has left this side for without one or more carriers of opium aboard. Stranded Americans have frequently been employed, as the difference in price between opium here and in America enables the ring to give the carriers not only a first-class passage, but also a good sum of money besides. From what has been learned the ring has had great luck with its carriers,” who have all got through safely with the "goods.” The authorities, who are aware of the existence of the "ring,” have the greatest difficulties in coping with thee situation, because opium smoking and drug taking are not prohibited under the English law. Opium and similar drugs are not supposed to be sold in England save through a physician's certificate and the seller must keep a record of the sale and the name and address of the purchaser, but these difficulties have been surmounted by means of “tame” druggißts and “reliable” wholesalers. On the question of export, from which the ring at present receives the greatest profit, the only means of prosecution is under the merchandise act, and then only if a false manifest is .found to have been used. ba the cast of opium shipped in.

film tins the authorities point out that it would be extremely dangerous for them to open every tin, thereby running the risk of spoiling invaluable films on the mere chance that they contained opium. They say they would require almost absolute proof before they would take such a step. Recently, however, the police in the Txmdon docks have nipped several attempts to ship opium out of the country fraudulently in barrels containing cheeses or grease. Several Chinese have been prosecuted and fined, but the fines were immaterial and the Chinese only minor factors in the game. London Authorities Alarmed. But the society craze for drug taking is spreading so rapidly, particularly among the better-class women, that a new dangerous social factor has arisen with which the authorities are seriously concerned. Means of grappling with it are now being discussed, .but the suppression of the vice will require the passage of new laws giving the police greater powers than they now possess. A few years ago the drug-taking habit, and particularly opium smoking, was comparatively rare in England, save among the Chinese along the docks in the East end and a small number of American crooks who frequented dens in the same neighborhood. By a system of exchange of intelligence the American dope fiends knew just where to go when they arrived in London and wanted their “hop.” Like homing pigeons they made directly for Limehouse causeway, near the docks. It is a narrow, horrible, darksome street, where lights are few and shadows many. It is not a nice- place to visit alone. The houses are of the two-story kind, broken here and there by dingy shop fronts. On the left is the haven of the Americans. It is run by a Chinese whose name is known to every American opium fiend from New York to San Francisco. For years it has been the mecca of pipe fiends visiting London. The interior is as dingy as the exterior. Several rooms are lined with rude bunks and the dim light of the oil lamps shows filthy paper and a faded cheap chromo or two. The Chinese who runs the place 4s of uncertain age. He might be sixty, seventy or one hundred. With softfelted slippers he pads about from room to room giving to each customer his proper degree of attention. He never forgets a patron and in some mysterious manner keeps in touch with all their movements and happenings. How he does it no one has been able to fathom because he has never been known to leave the narrow precincts of his own narrow street. Perhaps it is because his world comes to him. Yet, like some Chinese Morlarity, he seems to be the center of a web whose fibers never loosen. Haven for Expatriated Crook*. “Where is Morris M.?” he was asked one night. "Oh, he-South Africa, Joburg this week, next'week Cape Town.” “What’s become of S.?” mentioning the name of a man who had been cutting a suspicious dash around the West end hotels. “You no hear? He went back New. York. Pinched, forgery; doing threeyear stretch. He gave me bad check —forty-two dollars.” Another venture, and the information was promptly forthcoming that the man was dead, and so, question after question about Various American dope fiends, from crooks to actors and actresses; this man never was at a loss to tell whether they were living or dead, well or ill, poor or prosperous. In the present state of affairs this queer character looms large in securing opium for the ring. But the clientele in the older days was small. Now it is large. It began to grow when the Rosenthal murder caused many New York gunmen and other criminals to emigrate to London. These undesirables brought with them thelj usual theories about gaining a livelihood. Save that they found that gun play was dangerous in London, and that knifing was much safer, the majority of them found London aim

pier than New York. The women upon whom they preyed were not as cunning as 'their American sisters and were apt pupils in the art of robbery under the influence of drugs, so the expatriated crook simply gave himself up to a life of ease, with very little necessity to resort to violence except in an occasional fight with those of his kind. The drug habit spread rapidly among the women. From opium smoking they quickly passed to cocaine snuffing and ether drinking, until now it is a rarity in that class to find anybody not addicted to some drug. But with the war came a new development of the traffic. China, India and Egypt, where the authorities had been suppressing the opium and hashish habit, offered an illimitable field of operations. The film-tin idea was hit upon and the ring got to work in short order. Women Taught to Smoite Opium. The 'restriction of night clubs in London, where for two /ears women of the better class had been following the craze of ragtime, raised a demand for some other sort of palliative for the depression of war, so the “ring" came into play again. Houses in Soho and fiats in inconspicuous parts of the West, end were taken and fitted up in luxurious style, and the same methods of touting which were so successful when the “chemin de fer" craze was in vogue in London were again employed. Parties were made up to see an opium joint. The mere suggestion of the Orient was enough to appeal to women suffering from abnormal depression after the excitement of gambling and night clubs. They went to see. The furnishings of the place with their attractive divans and suave attendants were attractions in themselves. The operation of transforming the pasty opium to a puffy chocolate and then rolling it into a littlepellet ready for smoking was in itself a process of interest.. “Just try one whiff.** After murmurings and objections and the usual rigmarole about it being harmful answered by the stock phrase, “Why, I have been smoking it for years and it has never hurt ine,’’ the victim usually tried. After the first plunge the rest was easy. Any fit of depression was seized as an excuse to try the pine.