From: [c--m] at [castle.ed.ac.uk] (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: uk.misc,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Druggies - so they die, who cares (was: Must restaurants provide water?)
Date: 14 Jun 93 21:38:49 GMT

In article <[1993 Jun 14 134030 385] at [sco.com]> [c--rl--s] at [sco.COM] (charless) writes:
>the interesting factoids about who the addicts were back in the
>1920's, when heroin use for recreational purposes was still
>legal.

My grandfather, like many medical doctors of his time (and like Freud)
was a cocaine addict. It caused him no problems at all as far as we
could see, or he reported, and he always claimed that without the
cocaine he would have been an alcoholic. He died at the age of 96,
shortly after his third wife had died on him, and it would seem
because he was fed up with living so long. In those days in Britain
addicts could register with the NHS, and thus there were no black
market profits to be made on illegal drugs, and no pushers. The drug
problems all started when we became sanctimonious about these addicts
on the NHS, kicked them off, and just like the US before us, created
the whole apalling modern drug scene of criminality, pushers, and drug
barons.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    [c--m] at [uk.ac.ed.aifh]          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205