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Show BLAME PLACED ON PHYSICIANS Growth of Drug Habit in United States Alleged to Ee Due to Opiates Ordered In Prescriptions. That 99 per cent, nf all the cocaine I and morphine manufactured in this (.country is used by persons who have I termed tho drug habit through physi-j physi-j cians' prescriptions is the startling I statement made by Dr. L. F. Kebler, Chief of the Division of Drugs, Department Depart-ment of Agriculture. This statement, concerning the appalling growth ol drug addiction in the United States, was made by Dr. Kebler iu an address at Washington, before the American Society for the Study of Alcohol and Narcotics. Dr. Kebler is quoted by Washington papers as having declared that drug using had increased 100 per cent, in the last 40 years, and that American j medical men were not discriminating enough in their use of opiates. Their overindulgence to their patients, he said, is creating thousands of drug users every year. "It is a very sad thing to say that our physicians are doing the greatest work in promoting the use of cocaine and morphine," said the doctor. "State laws are not saving the public from the grip of the drug habit, and the American' public is sinking tighter and tighter into the black abyss of the morphine and cocaine fiend. "The worst of it is that the impor-I impor-I tation of opium into the country is becoming larger and larger year by year. I have heard it said on reliable ! authority that 93 per cent, of the cocaine co-caine and morphine manufactured in this country is used by persons who have formed the hahit through doctors' doc-tors' prescriptions." Almost simultaneously with Dr. Kob-ler's Kob-ler's address, Dr. J. A. Patterson, at Grand Rapids, Michigan, in a public statement said that 1!) out of every 20 patients who come to an institution with which he is connected for treat-I treat-I ment for the drug habit owe their j downfaH to physicians' prescriptions. |