LAMBERN

December 29,1924.

Doctor Alexander Lambert
43 2% 72a Street
New York, Nels

My dear Doctor Lambert:

I wish to thank ym for your letter and the copy of the
comment on Mr.Hobson’s activities which you inclosed. There
is quite a history connected with Mr.Hobson's acti viti es
in the narcotic movement that I think you may be interested
in. I have been studying them for about ea year and am quite
sure that Mr.Hobson is neither honest nor sincere.

Last spring he presented a twenty-seven page pamphlet
to Congress with the suggestion that fifty million covies
be published and distributed to practically everyone in the
United States. His idea was that it should be on every
breakfast table, in every school and home and that people «..~
-in societies in general should be preaching sbout it all of
the time. It was the most nonsensical article I ever reath,,.
in so faras the relation of its claims to actual facts was —
_ goncerned. I appeared before the Senate Committee on Printing
in opposition to it. The testimony I gave impressed the
committee and completely upset Mr.Hobson's plans but he
aid mt give up. During the summer he started a campaign
agairmt me and by various insidious, underhand methods
tried to undermine and diseredit me with government officials.
His efforts failed. These officials all turned him down
but in the face of that he has nerve enough to get out
a circular letter in which he states that the Public Health
Service and the narcotic division of the Burean of Internal
Revenue are assisting him and he implies, without actually
stating, that these bureaus are anxious to have his program
put through Congress at this session. Mr.Hobson goes from
one person to the other or from one bureau to the other |
and claims to each one that the other has endorsed him when
aS a matter of fact he has been definitely told that they
Doctor Alexander Lambert-2

If

disapprove of his activities. His effort to lead the
Public Health Service and the marcotic division to believe
that you stood back of the statement that two thou sand
addicts could be created with one ounce of heroin is an
example of what he does right along.

 

The reason Mr.Hogson sitéeks so tenaciously
to this statemat is, I think, because such statemmts have
‘to be mt out to the "public if he is ever successful in
raising the million dollar endowment fund he has declared —
to be one of the objectives of the association. The same —
metive is behind the statemnt he maie in New York a year
or so ago~ that there were 17,000 heroin addicts among the
school children of one-borough. He pulls these addicts out
of the sir. There is no basis for any of the statements he
makes. His educational campaign in California was conducted
along these lines and practically every statement he has
made has been proved to be erroneous or an actual distortion
of statema@ints mde by various officials or others whom
he interviewed. ~

If itr, Hob son" s idea of the mrcotic situation were in
any way correét it would still be doubtful whether his
program of publicity would be advisable. He wants to teach
children to be suspicious of each other and of everybody;
not to accept food while away from home from strangers or

from their best friends because these friemis are probably

in the enploy of peddlers trying to “hook" them into addiction.
Also, to look out for suspicious characters and report them

to the police. If this is not pernicious mental hygiene, |
then there is not such thing. Mr.Hobson has been told that
education of this kind wmld be positively harmful but he
persists in it, I think, because of its alarmist note ani
because of the possibilities for misng money in such bo
statements as this at any responsible agency should inferse, —
the m.

 

If you should care to see Mr.Hobson's twenty-seven page
pamphlet and the five page letter he got out attacking me
I will make copies of them for you.

Very traly yours, |

| | Lawrence Zolb,
LK~T Surgeon, USPHS.