COCAINE IN MEDICINE
RUINED A BOY'S HEALTH.
Took It For Catarrh and Acquired
the Habit -- Took Many
Bottles a Week.
Following the crusade against cocaine drug stores the Humane authorities are reaching out after the patent medicines that contain the drug. Ever since the confession of Willie Smith, the 15-year-old messenger boy who was sent to the reform school to be cured, the authorities have been flooded with information about youthful cocaine fiends.
Now they are working on a case of a boy who is a physical and mental wreck from using a patent medicine which compound contains alcohol and cocaine. The boy was taken to the office of F. E. McCrary, Humane agent, Saturday afternoon and questioned. He was believed to be a cocaine fiend, but in his confession to Mr. McCrary he said he only indulged in "Crown." When asked what "Crown" was, he said a patent medicine for catarrh. The boy said that he first used the medicine for medicinal purposes and after using three bottles had acquired a taste for the medicine that was ravenous.
Week by week the boy increased the number of bottles he purchased and drank until his system rebelled and he began to lose flesh. His father and mother found it impossible to make him stop using the patent medicine and a druggist refused to sell him any more. Then he changed his place of procuring the medicine, and to avoid suspicion had other boys buy the bottles for him.
Humane agent McCrary said yesterday that his office was investigating the boy's story and intended to put a stop to the sale of all drugs containing cocaine in large quantities if such a thing was possible. He said if enough evidence could be secured against the proprietors of the drug stores which sold the cocaine compounds to boys to warrant their arrest he would swear out the complaints. According to the Humane authorities and physicians at the city hospital there is as much danger in using patent medicines containing cocaine as in snuffing "coke."
