It has been demonstrated to be quite practicable for all the opium-producing countries to make the drug a government monopoly; it would be equally practicable for them to sell directly to those governments that use it for governmental distribution. The only obstacle to an international understanding is that the producing countries know very well that government regulation would materially lessen the sale of the drug. Within the borders of our own country such a system would simplify rather than complicate present conditions. We have to-day along our frontier and in our ports inspectors trying to stop the illicit traffic in opium, and the money thus spent by our Government would be more than sufficient to handle and distribute all of the drug that is needed for legitimate purposes. Any druggist could of course continue to buy all that he wished, but he would have to account for what he bought. The drug would serve only its legitimate purpose, because the druggist could sell it only on prescription. This would at once eliminate the gravest feature of the case, the indiscriminate sale of proprietary and patent medicines containing small quantities of opium. The physician would thus have to shoulder the entire responsibility for the use of any habit-forming drug. With the Government as the first distributor and the physician as the last, the whole condition of affairs would assume a brighter aspect, for it would be a simple matter to get from the physician a proper accounting for what he had dispensed. Thus the new crop of users would be small, and less than ten per cent. of the opium at present brought into this country would be sufficient to meet every legitimate need.
The important habit-forming drugs are opium, cocaine, and the small, but dangerous, group of hypnotics. These last--trional, veronal, sulphonal, medinal, etc.--are chiefly coal-tar products, and are not always classified as habit-forming drugs, but they are such, and there are many reasons why the sale of them should be scrupulously regulated. The opium derivatives go under the general head of narcotics. Morphine is the chief active principle, and codeine and heroin are the chief derivatives of morphine. Codeine is one eighth the strength of morphine; heroin is three times as strong as morphine.