THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF KEEPING WELL 411 



developing an artificial appetite or craving which leads to 

 their continued use. Since the effect of such substances is 

 usually harmful and since they tend to engraft themselves 

 upon communities as social customs, they present a two- 

 fold relation to the general problem of keeping well. The 

 individual may be injured through the personal use which 

 he makes of them, or he may be injured through the effect 

 which they have upon relatives or friends or upon society 

 at large. Since our social environment is a factor in health 

 little less important than our physical environment, the 

 conditions that make for their continuance should be more 

 generally understood. 



How Social Agencies perpetuate the Use of Habit-forming 

 Drugs. When the use of some habit-forming drug has 

 risen to the importance of a general custom, a number of 

 conditions arise which tend to continue its use, even though 

 the fact may be quite generally known that the substance 

 does harm. In the first place, those who have formed the 

 habit suffer inconvenience and distress when deprived of 

 its use. In the second place, a number of people will have 

 become interested in the production and sale of the sub- 

 stance, and these will lose financially if it is discontinued. 

 In the third place, those of the rising generation will, from 

 imitation or persuasion, be constantly acquiring the habit 

 before they are sufficiently mature to decide what is best 

 for them. Thus may the use of a substance most harmful, 

 such as the opium of the Chinese, be indefinitely continued 

 a species of slavery from which the individual finds it 

 hard to escape. 



Such is human nature and such are the forces and influ- 

 ences of human society, that the freeing of a people from 

 the bondage of some habit-forming drug cannot be accom- 

 plished without strenuous and persistent effort. Education, 



