What has the law done for the addict? Like the physicians, the legislators have done the best they could in the light of their knowledge, experience and teaching. Some of them seem, however, to have had their attention directed unduly to a special class of those addicted, the addicts found among the type of person which begins or tends to end among the criminal or vicious of the so-called “underworld.” Legislators and administrators have realized that the taking of narcotic drugs was rapidly spreading, and that it constituted a public menace in the class to which their attention was directed; and they applied the means at their disposal in the remedy of what they saw. But again, like the physician, they tended to center their attention upon the mere taking of narcotic drug, and they attempted to control by legislation the possession and use of narcotic drugs with too little appreciation of fundamental disease facts and of general basic considerations of widespread application. They did not seem to have appreciated the extent to which their legislation or administration would affect the great numbers of upright, and innocent and worthy addiction-sufferers of whom they did not know, and who did not possess the fundamental characteristics of the class and type of person addicted against which they legislated. They rightly directed their attention towards the control of the sources of drug supply and they rightly limited the ultimate legal supplying of drug to duly licensed and responsible persons and institutions, specifically described. The slogan of most of the special legislation has been to place responsibility for the supply and use of narcotic drugs squarely upon the shoulders of the medical profession. Such effort is wise, and this is where the responsibility belongs. And this is where the medical profession would have it placed in so far as the medical profession supplies narcotic drugs. The honest physician has no desire to dodge responsibility for his handling of narcotic addicts to the best of his ability, nor should he have any objection to a reasonable responsibility and accounting for narcotic drugs used in that handling; especially since the taking of narcotic drugs has in certain of its phases, developed as a serious situation entirely outside of the medical profession, in which situation these drugs are non-professionally supplied and used to such an extent as to constitute a public menace. The non-medical supplying and administering of such drugs should not, however, be controlled in such a way as to unduly hamper their honest and legitimate use by medical men, and to deprive the honest, worthy and innocent sufferer from addiction-disease of their legitimate therapeutic administration.