The great numbers of innocent and worthy unsuspected sufferers from this disease, who could not by any stretch of wildest imagination, be regarded as mentally or morally abnormal or subnormal have therefore been placed in a position where they could not afford to demand their rights or state their case. Their problems are only recently beginning to receive general consideration. Their cases have compelled us to revise our conception of the narcotic addict, and to question ourselves as to the necessity for their continued addiction over the years of their addiction. For their own good and that of society, what shall we do with them, and what can we do for them? In the present state of public opinion and public attitude towards narcotic addicts in general would it benefit either them or society to class them merely as “drug addicts” along with the drug-users of other types of individuals and other personal characteristics for administrative handling by detailed administrative supervision and control? Can the same administrative and other methods which admittedly must be employed to protect society from the manifestly unfit accomplish anything of good in the cases of these responsible and valuable citizens? Until there is a truer understanding of addiction-disease, and a wider appreciation of the facts that the personal attributes of its victims differ as widely as those of cardiac or any other disease condition, and that merely because a man has contracted this disease is no reason for regarding him as in any way unworthy or unfit--will stringent and drastic forcible regulative measures directed against mere use of narcotics work out to the advancement or hindrance of ultimate solution and to the ultimate benefit or harm of society? These are the questions to be applied to all restrictive administrative activities. The problem of the care of the worthy and innocent addict in such a way as not to unnecessarily harm him nor deprive his family and society of his competent activity is just as important as the handling of the addict of the type of individual from whom society must be protected. The large numbers of worthy and valued citizens who are individually and personally social and economic assets and who are sufferers from addiction-disease constitute a very important consideration in the narcotic problem. They certainly are not fit subjects for enforced custodial and correctional handling, and if such were forced upon them they would be seriously harmed, personally, socially, economically and physically. Very many of them our equals or betters, we have no right to subject them to associations and experiences which we ourselves would rebel against and be humiliated by simply because they have developed a disease condition from which no one of us is immune.