Drug Addiction

Report Outline
Social Consequences of Narcotic Addiction
Adequate Treatment of Drug Addicts
Preventing Spread of Drug Addiction

Social Consequences of Narcotic Addiction

Accumulating Evidence of a rapid increase in the A use of habit-forming drugs by young people, and a resulting association of many of them with criminal elements, has brought sudden public recognition of one of the most disturbing phenomena of American city life. A rising demand for corrective measures has been strengthened by the recent discovery of attempts by city dope rings to extend the drug traffic to military camps.

District Attorney Frank S. Hogan reports that narcotics cases involving teen-agers of New York County have tripled in the last two years. In January, 35 persons were arrested in Brooklyn and the Bronx on charges of selling narcotics, some of whom were caught while plying their trade with high school students. A week-end raid in Detroit in February netted 75 peddlers who were said by police authorities to be supplying upwards of 2,000 young people with drugs. Seventy persons were taken into custody in Washington, D. C., Mar. 17–18, following the arrest of four young soldiers at Fort Eustis, Va., on charges of drug-selling. Federal agents said the servicemen received their supplies from a wholesale ring at the national capital which had previously developed a market for heroin among teenagers.

At the U. S. Public Health Service hospital at Lexington, Ky., the principal public institution in the United States for treatment of drug addicts, 18 per cent of the patients admitted in 1950 were under 21 years of age—one of them under 14. Five years ago, in 1946, only three per cent of the persons admitted for treatment at Lexington were minors.