Law Enforcement Procedures Research Articles

Drug dependence among physicians.

THE article by Vaillant, Brighton and McArthur elsewhere in this issue corroborates numerous other studies indicating that physicians are prone to drug addiction, in part at least because of easy access to drugs. It raises several questions of vital importance to the medical profession. First of all, there is the problem of how a physician who becomes dependent upon drugs can get competent help on a completely confidential basis, and without becoming involved with law-enforcement procedures (unless there is criminal activity). The physician who becomes addicted can withdraw from practice and seek help at a distant hospital, but this is . . .

Teen-age drug addicts arraigned in the Narcotic Court of Chicago.

The growing menace of drug addiction among teen-agers has aroused the public to the extent that in some areas efforts are being made to determine the cause and to find ways of treating it. The epidemic-like quality of the problem indicates the need of close cooperation of all public groups to attempt to understand and deal with it. In Chicago, the problem is being attacked in several ways, but primarily the emphasis has been on law enforcement and legal procedures to deal with law offenders who are also drug addicts. On April 2, 1951, the Narcotic Court of the Municipal Court of Chicago was established as a result of the recognition on the part of law-enforcing officers of the increasing use of narcotics among teen-agers and the resulting increase in crime occasioned by their use. All cases originating in Chicago that involve law-violating narcotic addicts are processed through the Narcotic