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tawteee C. Kolb, M. D.
6645<32nd Street, NW
Washington 15, D. C.
Dr. Maurice Seevers August 29, 1956

Department of Pharmacology
University of Michigen Medical School

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Dear Dr. Seevers:

Growing hysteria about drug addiction that has led to monstrous
legal and administrative excesses prompted me to write about it for a
popular journal. I hoped by presenting simple facts to arouge public
reaction that would hold a trend that threatens to carry us back
close to the witch hunting area of several centuries ago, when so many
mental patients and other helpless people were executed. As an example
of the trend, a witness before a committee of Congress said in support

Of a specially vicious bill "The language of the new Bill will enable

us to trap an addict like a wild animal."

I am sending the enclosed reprint te same leading physicians
and other professional men throughout the country in the hope that the
—" oriented en
aculons

The British method of dealing with drug addiction is well de~
seribed in a chapter by Jeffrey Bishop, a prominent London physician,
in Marie Nyswander's book, "The Drug Addict as a Patient", Grune and
Stratton, 1946. It is also described, in at least three other publi-
cations available in this country. I have a letter from the Hone
Office about it and I studied it off and on in England, 1928-31.
There is no doubt about the successful, humane and effective British
approach. They deal with oplate addiction as a medical problem with
enly sufficient touch from law enforcenent authorities to prevent
unnecessary physical addiction.

Lawrence Kolb, Me. D.

Enclosure >
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