The hospital program is thus designed to wean the addict from his preoccupation with drugs and direct him back to the satisfaction of living which come from association with people. Therapy sessions, individual or in groups, help some patients to explore their personality problems as these have influenced their use of drugs. A work program and educational facilities restore to the addict the lost confidence in his ability to work regularly and productively and help him to learn new skills and new interests.

It is a long road back, and only a beginning can be made in an institution. Even the best mental hospital can be only a preparation for living.

Who among us yield to the narcotics evil? Are such persons a special part of society? An occupational list of its victims indicates how deadly, how allembracing, its influence may be, how every part of society has been penetrated. Its victims have been writers, truckdrivers, lawyers, mechanics, doctors, bakers, beauticians, carpenters, nurses, musicians- the list could go on and on. What these have in common are inner feelings of inferiority, emptiness, isolation from others.

Often the beginning is in a family group which, like the juvenile delinquents, is an unbalanced one-disrupted by death, desertion, or divorce, or where the mother exerts a dominating influence and the young boy has no adequate male after whom to pattern his own development. But it may be for other reasons: The alcoholic or antisocial father cannot help his son become a healthy adult. Whether he is brutal or kind, that is, whether he is a frightening or inspiring figure, he becomes the object of imitation, for it is a psychological law that we tend to imitate those whom we fear or those whom we admire. Easy access to narcotics and their use by popular people sometimes provide an irresistible attraction for the already weak person. When we can strengthen family life, and the institutions which support and stabilize it, we will have provided a powerful immunization against the virus of drug addiction.

The outlined program is not easy to accomplish. Difficult problems never have easy answers. But is is our problem, not just that of the addict or of those who specialize in his care and treatment. It calls for the active interest of all citizens, who must support each of the several aspects of the problem.

Is such a program worth aiming for? I believe the readers of Listen know it is.

THE AUTHOR

For many years Arthur K. Berliner has been in close touch with the drugaddiction problem. At the present time he is chief of the Psychiatric Social Service Department of the United States Public Health Service Hospital at Fort Worth.

In addition, he instructs in child psychology at Texas Christian University, and is case consultant for Family Service Association at Fort Worth.

In this exclusive Listen feature he candidly views the legalizing of the use of narcotics being advocated in numerous circles and describes the dire results if such action is taken.

NARCOTIC

ADDICTION

IN

NEW YORK-1955

A Continuing Problem

Report of Jacob K. Javits, Attorney General, to the Legislature of the State of New York.

JACOB K. JAVITS
Attorney General

STATE OF NEW YORK

DEPARTMENT OF LAW

ALBANY

September 1, 1955

To his Excellency, the Governor:

To the Honorable, the Speaker of the Assembly:

To the Honorable, the Temporary President of the Senate: This report is the result of a six-month survey of narcotic addiction my office has just completed.

Contrary to the best - and what seemed justified - hopes of that time, the stricter control and punitive measures enacted by the Legislative Session of 1952 appear now to have effected only a temporary turnback in the number of narcotic cases. The social malignancy of drug addiction is again acute within the State of New York.

Final reports show that the narcotic case load may well have reached a record high in 1954, and there is reason to believe that the volume may continue to increase. In New York City during the past year, arrests on charges of selling or possessing narcotics were 20% greater than in the so-called "epidemic" year of 1951 and narcotic addicts sentenced for crime were 35% greater.

Optimistic beliefs to the contrary notwithstanding, drug use by youngsters is also on the rise. Narcotic arrests in New York City of persons under 21 jumped 30% from 1953 to 1954.

It can be estimated conservatively that together, these addicts young and old, must now beg, borrow, sweat out or steal upward of $40,000,000 a year in this State to pay the peddlers for their dope.

Understandable, therefore, is the fact that as the rate of addiction rises, the rate of consequent and inevitable crime must rise. On police blotters, on court records, on prison registers, the narcotics graphs are again curving upward. The New York County Court of General Sessions, one of the largest courts in the United States, reports that 30 per cent of the prisoners investigated by its probation officers are found to be dope addicts. Almost one out of every three. In contrast to this condition of spreading virulence is the frustrated nature of our efforts to cope with it. We lack, even now, any sig nificant amount of experimental work that is fundamental to the creation of an effective action program for prevention or cure. This failure is ironic in an era noted for great scientific advances and for vast outpourings of cash and time in pursuit of new knowledge.

Enforcement officials, the judiciary, the hospitals are hampered by limited facilities, limited personnel and limited funds. Credit is due them for restricting as much of the narcotic impact as they have. But they are inadequately armed and afflicted with uncertainty as to the ultimate effectiveness of their efforts. For they must rely on old ways, and there is a new challenge.

The challenge concerns not only us as State officials. It confronts local and Federal authorities in a variety of grim aspects. And of course, it is a matter of concern to the individual citizen, for dope seeps deeply into homes and schools and the business world, taking direct and indirect toll in personal tragedies and shocking economic

waste.

I have found a tendency to view narcotics in our State as "mostly a New York City problem." It is true that the City has been unhappily the principal east coast center of the illicit narcotic traffic. - since it is the largest port of entry and therefore attracts the most smugglers and offers the most concentrated market for peddlers - yet it is well to recall that addiction is a socially contagious disease and is not necessarily and permanently contained by geographic borderlines.

In 1951, recognizing that the drug traffic had reached a fever point, you empowered my predecessor, Attorney General Nathaniel L. Goldstein, to investigate. On the basis of his recommendations relating to new controls and enforcement, you enacted a series of advanced measures which served at the outset to curb the trend and to set a pattern for other States.

It was well understood then that no "final" answers were in hand, but early success caused an ebbing of public alarm. Throughout the country, too, the tide of addiction seemed to be ebbing. Interest dwindled, particularly among non-governmental groups without whose efforts and support no total control could ever be possible. Almost immediately after I took office as Attorney General in January of this year, I undertook to re-survey the field. The finding of a renewed upward trend is supported statistically by information which is detailed hereafter in this report.

In the course of our work, and with reference to my past activity as a Congressman on narcotics legislation, some opportunities for positive new action became evident to me. I am embodying them in five recommendations.

At this point, however, I consider it necessary to re-emphasize certain hard realities about the vexing and complicated problem. At the heart of it lies the medical enigmas: Why does an indi

vidual become an addict? How can a certain and positive cure be achieved? Modern medicine has come but little closer to answering these questions than the ancient seers. It has proven simple enough to "detoxify" or "withdraw" an addict from dope while he is under restraint. But experience indicates that as many as 50% to 80% of the subject of these quick "cures" revert to the habit.

Despite this, there are too few provisions being made today for adequate post-custodial supervision and care of discharged addicts. Once off the drug and seemingly no longer addicted they are taken from often crowded and otherwise required facilities and returned into their previous environment. A majority of them are then returned to public agencies when their renewed craving has again burst into crime. Only in the last year, for instance, has Riverside Hospital for adolescent drug addicts established a post custodial clinic at which attendance is mandatory; and it is almost unique

in this.

The availability of illicit dope is another crippling factor to control efforts. To hope to cut down addiction by eliminating the supply is ingenuous in view of the international situation. Federal officials have repeatedly stressed the difficulty of stopping all but a portion of the traffic across our shores, and one expressed doubt that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics seizes even five per cent of the heroin being smuggled into the country. If we cannot completely dope-proof our borders, then only strict, honestly-policed, world-wide compacts against production can materially thin the supply. These are remote for the time being. Communist China, of course, is one of the chief sources of illicit drugs and the prospects for agreement with that regime are not bright right now.

With these factors in mind, the complexity of a control program becomes evident. Legislation in this State alone will not solve our problems. There is an obvious need for the coordination of plans and efforts on all government levels.

There is need for extensive medical research projects. Consider, in this connection, the time, the money, the genius devoted to the fight against polio - and the splendid results that are being achieved. There were in 1954, throughout the United States, 38,741 cases of polio reported. About 73% were paralytic, 29% non-paralytic and the remainder of the cases listed only as "suspect."

Dr. Harry J. Anslinger, Federal Commissioner of Narcotics, reports that in the same year there were approximately 60,000 known drug addicts in the United States, a conservative estimate. You would be hard put to find much pure research or field study being