Them Out

Thinning

The idea of New Guinea’s Highlanders getting even higher on “purple hearts” or “black bombers” makes the mind boggle. But apparently the Aus tralian Administration in New Guinea takes the problem deadly seriously.

Papua-New Guinea housewives will have to get amphetamine drugs (mainly used as slimming tablets) on prescription from now on or face the risk of being arrested as drug addicts. In more “civilised” parts of the world the amphetamines have been listed as leading to drug addiction.

The Administration intends virtually ceasing to grant import licences for the amphetamines and no further supplies of the pills are expected to become available after existing stocks run out. It adds that it does not consider amphetamine addiction a problem in the territory at pre sent, “but experience in the more developed countries shows that amphetamine has replaced the opiates as the major drug of addiction”.