The Terrible Truth (PSA)

Everyone had ever told me a few years ago that we would ever read headlines like these in American newspapers I would have called him crazy. Yet here we are reading them. In the middle of the 20th century and the United States of America, hundreds and hundreds of teenage boys and girls are becoming hopeless dope addicts every year.

It's fantastic, it's unbelievable and it's terrible, but it's true. The government maintains two hospitals just to treat drug addicts at Lexington, Kentucky, and Fort Worth, Texas. It used to be a rare thing for a juvenile to be admitted, but look at these recent figures.

And remember, these are only confirmed addicts who have come to the attention of federal authorities. How many others are still only occasional users of marijuana or heroin, morphine, or in some cases, sleeping pills? It's pretty hard to estimate.

But there's one sure thing. Nobody is going to stay an occasional user very long. This is one game nobody beats. If you use narcotics before long, you'll have the habit, about the hardest in the world to break.

And the dope addicts say, you're hooked. How does one become hooked? The simplest way to answer that is to talk to someone who has had the experience. This is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Howard.

They just got their teenage daughter back after a six month nightmare that even Edgar Allen Poe couldn't have improved on. Mrs. Howard agrees to let us talk to her daughter, Phyllis, when we explained that we could use her case to help others avoid the same mistakes.

This is Phyllis as she looked six months ago, a senior in high school, pretty as a picture. Just recently she was released from the narcotic ward at the County Jail in the custody of her parents.