out. (The average physician would probably have been astounded to know that only a decade before, many of these wretched desperadoes had held down jobs, owned homes, and raised families.) The medical profession was more than happy to turn this ugly problem over to the Treasury Department.  

But there’s always somebody who won’t go along with the program.  In this case it was a doctor in Shreveport by the name of Willis P. Butler.  Like his contemporary, Charles Terry in Jacksonville, Dr. Butler was a local health official who happened to be in the forward trenches at the start of the drug war.  In 1919, as the federal enforcement efforts began to cut into the availability of drugs throughout the country, Shreveport city officials became alarmed at the sudden increase in crime among addicts who were trying to finance their habit. “Thievery was bad,” said Butler, “They were stealing stuff off front porches.” State officials suggested that Butler set up a treatment program for addicts like the one they were running in New Orleans.  He went down to take a look.  “I saw right away that the clinic was trying to fool their patients off of drugs.  They were mixing morphine in solution and reducing their dosage drastically.”  But the state medics were only fooling themselves.  “The addicts knew what they were doing because some of them were doubled up in pain.”^[41]  Butler had enough experience as a jailhouse physician to know this approach wouldn’t work. So when he got back to Shreveport he came up with a triage system that some authorities still consider the best single model of community opiate control and treatment in American history.^[42]  In the four years the clinic was in business, Butler and his staff admitted some 1200 patients and they were sorted into three groups: 1) addicts who needed some kind of immediate medical care, 2) those that were physically healthy, and 3) the incurable.  The first group had their habit maintained until they were cured of their other ailments, then they were put into a detox program that included up to a month of intensive hospital care.  The second group got drugs until a bed was available, then