82 
Inaugural  Address. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Tharm. 
\    February,  1909. 
of  this  country  respecting  the  drug  habit.  I  believe  there  is  no  one 
who  doubts  the  enormous  injury  which  is  done  to  the  people  of 
this  country  by  the  indiscriminate  consumption  of  alcohol,  opium, 
cocaine,  etc.  The  question  then  arises,  how  is  this  evil  to  be  pre- 
vented or  mitigated  ?  Just  at  present  nearly  all  that  is  said  in  regard 
to  this  matter  relates  to  one  of  the  drugs  alone,  namely,  alcohol,  and 
the  people  of  this  country  are  rapidly  adopting  the  conviction  that 
prohibition  is  the  only  efficacious  remedy.  No  one  will  doubt  for  a 
moment  that  if  absolute  prohibition  is  established  the  evil  must  dis- 
appear, but  it  is  one  thing  to  declare  a  blockade  and  another  thing 
to  maintain  it.  The  laws  of  war  provide  that  no  nation  may  by 
simple  proclamation  establish  a  blockade.  If  it  does  not  have  the 
necessary  ships  to  enforce  the  blockade  it  is  null  and  void.  So  it 
is  with  prohibition.  If  a  blockade  is  declared  against  alcohol  in  a 
given  state  or  a  given  section  of  a  state,  it  is  only  effective  provided 
the  police  powers  of  the  state  make  it  effectual.  The  universal  his- 
tory, however,  of  prohibition  so  far,  of  the  fragmental  kind  which 
has  existed  in  this  country,  is  that  the  blockade  is  not  effective. 
When  the  saloon  is  abolished  the  "  speak-easy  "  appears,  and  of  the 
two  evils  the  latter  is  regarded  as  the  greater.  If  we  had  a  world- 
wide prohibition  in  which  the  whole  country  took  a  part  it  would 
be  different.  Such  an  attempt  is  already  proposed  in  reference  to 
opium  and  an  international  congress  is  to  meet  in  Shanghai  for  the 
purpose  of  having  illegitimate  traffic  in  opium  universally  prohibited. 
Already  in  this  country  under  the  Food  and  Drugs  Act  we  have 
excluded  smoking  opium  from  entry  and  therefore  from  interstate 
commerce,  but  of  course  our  laws  do  not  exclude  opium  of  Phar- 
macopceial  strength.  It  is  a  fact  known  to  you  all  that  smoking 
opium  is  always  of  a  lower  grade.  There  are  alkaloidal  bodies  and 
resins  in  opium  which  have  a  very  marked  effect  upon  the  smoker, 
yet  if  the  low  grade  opiums,  that  is,  those  containing  low  content 
of  morphia,  are  excluded  there  is  no  reason  why  the  high  grades 
may  not  find  their  way  into  the  smoking  dens.  They  may  not  be  so 
efficacious  nor  so  desirable  to  the  victims,  but  they  evidently  will 
produce  something  of  the  same  effects. 
Another  important  factor  in  this  consideration  must  not  be  lost 
sight  of,  namely,  that  if  we  have  universal,  international  prohibition 
in  habit-forming  drugs,  we  shall  eliminate  some  of  the  most  useful 
vehicles  of  the  physician  necessarily  handled  by  the  pharmacist. 
Hence  a  prohibition  of  a  universal  nature  must  result  in  the  elimina- 
