Heroin Trade

Manhattan police last week arrested nine men for selling narcotics, chiefly heroin, on the streets. The arrests indicated that a "dope ring" had parceled out the island to pedlers, whose sales aggregated $100,000 weekly. A few days before these arrests the police discovered the ring's arsenal-guns and other murderous .instruments in an apartment two blocks from sociologically famed Henry Street Settlement in the lower East Side. The weapons were used to destroy poachers who sneaked into allotted narcotic districts.

Discovery and arrests confirmed the contention which Charles Henry Tuttle published last week: "It is recognized that there is no other habit-forming drug more baneful than heroin, and it is apparent that the Federal enactment prohibiting its importation or manufacture in this country has met with little or no success. To date, all known investigations and prosecutions instituted since 1924 established that the sources of supply of heroin are not attributed to its illegal manufacture in our own country, but are traced to the smuggling of the drug from foreign countries."

Mr. Tuttle was U. S. district attorney in Manhattan from 1927 until last month when he resigned to become Republican candidate for Governor of New York (TIME, Oct. 6). Until his appointment as district attorney his interest in narcotics was remote. His job gave him two particular chores -- prosecution of narcotic law infractions, survey of the narcotic situation in New York City in behalf of the National Crime Commission.

As prosecutor he found it virtually im possible to discover or convict organizers of the drug traffic. They were too clever for his detective staff. One significant fact he learned by hearsay: the "big fellows" like the late rogue Arnold Rothstein, are rarely drug addicts. Nonetheless his men did make some important raids. No table were those last November and December in Greenwich Village, Times Square and Harlem.

As surveyor he found: "The forbearance of women to pains" lets them endure the pangs of drug withdrawal; bad associations were to blame for almost every drug user in New York; nine out of ten drug addicts use heroin alone, or in combination with morphine, opium, cocaine, laudanum or paregoric (opium derivative, oldtime baby soother).

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