1914 Jan 16 Heroin

“ ‘The drug habit has grown to terrible proportions in this city’ said a chemist to a Herald reporter this morning”

Hamilton Herald. January 16, 1914¹

In reaction to what was being considered a significant rise in the use of hard drug in Hamilton, the Hamilton Herald had been raising the concern to public generally.

In interviewing a local pharmacist, the Herald reporter was told the following :

“Especially the use of the drug heroin, which is nothing more or less than morphine in another form. It has the same effect as morphine, except that its after-result is perhaps not so bad. The trouble with it, like all drugs of such a nature, is that the appetite for it increases until the craving for it becomes pitiful to witness. Taken in large doses it will occasion death in a very few years.”¹

¹ “The Drug Habit : It Has Grown Alarmingly Here, Says Chemist.”

Hamilton Herald. January 16, 1914.

The Herald reporter who had been working on the matter of the drug problem in Hamilton received the following letter that very morning :

“I have been reading in your valuable paper about the drug habit. I beg you to state in your paper what the results of taking heroin are – Anxious Sister.”¹

The reporter briefly responded that the effect of heroin was reported to exactly the same as that of morphine although without the ‘hang-over.”

The reporter went on to note that heroin was said to be medicinally valuable, and was usually taken by hypodermic needle. It was illegal for heroin to be sold without a doctor’s permit.

The reporter, somewhat less than convinced, said that the Hamilton police had instituted a campaign against the illegal use of heroin in Hamilton.

An official told the reporter that “it will go hard with any druggist selling it (heroin) without a doctor’s permit.”¹