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Show could be prevented, the American Health League declares, while sys-1 tematic activities by the government might result in lengthening the average life in this country as much as fifteen years. When congress is brought to realize the benefit to human life that must follow the creation of a national health bureau, this project of the people should be at once assured, it is predicted. ' COCAINE AND OTHER DRUGS, AND DISEASE. Caling upon all Americans to urge congress to prevent loss of life and health by creating a national ''Bureau of Public Health," leaders of the American Health League have announced that legis- lation would soon be introduced to this ond at Washington on a nonpartisan non-partisan basis. The league has issued a circular in which it is said that, responding to general demands for such a scientific check to the preventable disease and death that is now known to cost the nation $1,500,000,000 in life and labor each year, officers of this organization organiza-tion arc making every effort to have law speedily made of their recommendation, rec-ommendation, that was contained in the platform of the three leading lead-ing parties in the last presidential campaign and has been advocated by leaders of every political faith ever since.. President Taft has just assured representatives of the American Medical association and American .Health league, they declare, that he is heartily in favor of this plan. If the people of every section of the land will declare themselves them-selves on this vital question in the next few weeks, it is asserted, Uncle Sam may soon be brought to give the same attention to the physical welfare of human being3 that he now does to that of sheep, ;attlc, hens and hogs. j Showing the immediate need of a federal health bureau to warn he people of this country of he dangers that menace their vitality in Ihe most common walks of every day life, the American Health League is calling attention to drugs as well as disease with which ivery American may come in harmful contact through lack of knowl-idge knowl-idge of the principles of personal hygiene. Numerous forms of drug habits are becoming more prevalent everywhere in the United States than most people realize, its officers issert. The dangers of cocaine, morphine and opium have been prom-nently prom-nently brought before our police authorities and vigorous efforts are being made to at least control and minimize the sale of cocaine. In a recent address at Washington, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley has called attention not only to these drugs, but also to the general use of caffeine, which he asserts is the most common habit-forming drug iu this country, where over 800,000,000 pounds of coffee containing it are consumed each year, according to recent statistics, besides temperance drinks in which caffeine is sometimes found. Tuberculosis and many other dread diseases might be checked and avoided in America through the educational activities of the proposed pro-posed national bureau of health, it is pointed out, Fully 100,000 of the deaths due each year to the Great White Plague in this country 4 |