Arodobevfmlm-}        Acquirement  of  Drug  Habits.  487 
very  few  retailers  actually  make  a  practice  of  supplying  drug  habitues 
or  bidding  for  their  trade.  On  the  other  hand,  when  a  manufacturer 
or  jobber  supplies  a  small  retail  drug  store  with  pounds  of  morphine 
and  cocaine  every  month,  can  it  be  said  they  do  not  know  the  reason 
for  such  unusual  orders  ?  One  store  in  Philadelphia,  a  store  doing 
little  prescription  and  no  hospital  business,  buys  cocaine  in  100-ounce 
lots,  almost  monthly.  What  must  be  the  moral  principle  of  the 
wholesaler  who  supplies  such  a  drug  store  with  such  a  self-advertis- 
ing criminal  purchase  ?  Before  we  punish  the  little  fellows  we  should 
begin  higher  up  and  put  behind  the  bars  the  criminals  who  make  it 
possible  for  the  little  fellows  to  carry  on  their  nefarious  trade.  They 
can  only  plead  ignorance  by  acknowledging  themselves  unfit  to  deal 
in  such  articles,  but  their  real  excuse  is  that  they  "  want  the 
money." 
If  it  is  possible  to  enact  laws  to  prevent  the  retail  sale  of  narcotic 
drugs  except  under  certain  conditions,  it  certainly  seems  feasible  to 
enact  a  law  that  will  prevent  persons  in  the  guise  of  retail  druggists 
obtaining  cocaine,  morphine,  etc.,  in  quantities  utterly  beyond  reason- 
able needs  of  their  business.  It  might  chafe  some  to  be  compelled 
to  show  how  much  of  a  certain  article  they  used  in  their  legitimate 
business,  but  it  is  already  done  by  the  National  Government  in  one 
form  in  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  alcohol  and  tobacco,  and  any 
one  who  has  at  all  studied  the  question  of  drug  abuse  realizes  that 
alcohol  is  fast  becoming  a  far  feebler  power  of  evil  than  narcotic 
drugs.  The  writer  may  be  emphatic,  but  he  has  seen  enough  of  the 
evils  coming  from  the  abuse  of  drugs  to  make  him  fear  that  unless 
very  stern  and  speedy  action  is  taken  now,  the  people  of  the 
United  States  will  pay  dearly  for  their  neglect  in  the  no  distant 
future.  And  he  has  little  faith  in  an  appeal  to  the  moral  sense  of 
the  men  who  are  to-day  supplying  the  retail  drug  stores  with  all  the 
drugs  they  can  sell,  nor  of  the  class  of  druggists  who  supply  the 
"  dope  fiends."  There  is  but  one  appeal  to  such  men,  and  that  is 
through  fear — fear  of  their  pocket-books  or  fear  of  jail — and  the 
only  way  to  stop  them  from  continuing  their  practice  is  to  make 
the  penalty  severe  enough  to  be  adequate  to  the  danger  of  their 
crime  and  then  administer  it  unsparingly.  A  murderer  who  destroys 
a  man's  body  is  an  angel  beside  one  who  destroys  that  man's  soul 
and  lets  the  body  live  for  crime. 
And  there  is  another  feature  demanding  our  attention — that  is, 
