office. At this point, the agents recommended to headquarters that they just leave Dr. Butler alone.  

In Washington, this finding was unacceptable.  The federal government didn’t have the authority to restrict maintenance to some physicians and not others.  Addict maintenance would have to be allowed nationally or not allowed at all.  Discrimination on the basis of “responsible” prescribing would put the government in even more trouble with the Constitution since this would clearly be the licensing of doctors.

In January of 1923 Butler was invited to a closed meeting in the office of the U.S. attorney and there he found three Treasury Department officials waiting for him.  They were polite but firm.  He was told that he was not in any way accused of wrong-doing, but his operation was going to have to close down.  Other cities were asking questions: if  Shreveport could have a clinic, why couldn’t they?  “No records were gone over,” said Butler, “no patients, officials, or doctors were called, and nothing was gone into except the closing of the dispensary.”^[45]  But he could see the handwriting on the wall. One way or another they were going to pull the plug. Defeated but unbowed, Butler agreed to shut the clinic down.  But he kept on writing prescriptions for a handful of addicts on his own authority.  Given his political clout, the T-men apparently decided they’d better not push him any further.

Six months after the clinic closed, the Shreveport Journal checked out the local scene to see what had happened since the federal intervention.  They found that while street traffic in heroin and morphine had been practically unknown before the clinic was shuttered, both drugs were now being sold freely everywhere.^[46]

On the Old Testament ritual of Yom Kippur, a goat was chosen by lot as a sacrifice to the wilderness demon Azazel. The priests would symbolically burden the scapegoat, or “goat of removal”