Word: murtagh
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...emotional illness, but doctors rarely get to treat it and can do virtually nothing to prevent it. In the U.S., prevention is left to law enforcement officers, and addicts go from court to jail. This is all wrong, says New York City's Chief Magistrate John M. Murtagh, 48, who from the bench has studied the sordid side of narcotics law enforcement and its failures for ten years. For addicts he urges medical treatment, both physical and psychiatric, as well as help in rehabilitating themselves, and long-term doctors' care. Only thus, he argues, can the illicit traffic...
Though prestigious organizations of law-abiding citizens-notably the New York Academy of Medicine-have urged adoption of the British system, Judge Murtagh has no hope that anything so revolutionary would be accepted in the U.S. In Who Live in Shadow, written with Sara Harris and published this week (McGraw-Hill; $4.50), Murtagh offers a compromise prescription: ¶ Set up facilities under federal auspices for treating narcotics addicts in all major cities...
Ironically, it is the law and the methods of its enforcement that have convinced Murtagh, charged with the administration of the law, that drug addiction is less of a legal than a social and medical problem. Murtagh is outraged because bull-necked Federal Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger dismisses the addict as "an immoral, vicious social leper." As the law works, Murtagh points out, multimillionaire underworld masterminds are virtually never caught (Genovese is a rare exception), and neither are the stratified middlemen, who peddle heroin in amounts down to ounces (at $500 an ounce for the pure "horse...
Thus reminded, Murtagh asked Saul J. Allen, director of the city's Traffic Summons Control Bureau, just how Big Joe was doing. In reply, Allen produced Exhibit A, a series of postcards from Big Joe, all addressed to "Dear Saul." They read: ¶ "December 12. I'm here in Kansas City, Mo. No gypsies here." ¶ "December 15. Omaha. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Not many gypsies here. Leaving for South. Perhaps do better there...
Late Communiqué. With Big Joe out on the Romany road, frustrated Magistrate Murtagh was forced to content him self with ordering Adams and Lee to pay half their fines immediately or go to jail. They paid. Meantime, Saul Allen, returning to his office, found waiting on his desk the latest postcard from Big Joe. "Dear Saul: Just a card to let you know that I just arrived here from Atlanta, Ga. Spoke to Zeke Williams there, and he told me he is sending you what he owes for tickets. I also spoke to other boys, and they promised...