Bennies the Menace

When the FBI arrested Bonnie Brown Heady in St. Louis for her part in the kidnap-killing of Bobby Greenlease (TIME, Oct. 19), they found a bottle of pills in her purse. The FBI told the Food & Drug Administration. In the death house, FDA Investigator Roy Pruitt interviewed Bonnie Heady and her partner, Carl Austin Hall. Where, Pruitt wanted to know, did they get the stuff without a prescription? Neither would tell. But Hall said he had been under the influence of the drug, plus liquor, when he killed the boy, and did not think he could have committed the crime without it.

This story, given to the House Appropriations Committee last week, highlighted a fast-growing problem in both medicine and crime. The pills were amphetamine,* which users call "goof balls" or "bennies." They produce a feeling of exhilaration, temporarily banish fatigue, and seem to sharpen the perceptions. That is why, in The Cruel Sea, the ship's surgeon gave them to Captain Ericson after days & nights on the bridge. But, as the doctor warned him then, the aftereffects are severe. The FDA lists increased fatigue and insomnia, and maybe aggressiveness, suicidal tendencies or collapse.

Because they feel so good right after taking a goof ball and so rotten after it wears off, most non-medical users reach for another when the effect of one begins to pale. Though amphetamine is not technically an addicting drug, it is habit-forming. Neurotics have a vicious-circle routine: goof balls to wake them up and keep them going through the day, then barbiturates to still the jags and jitters and lull them to sleep. Over-the-road truck drivers take amphetamine to keep awake, and highway authorities suspect that many unexplained accidents result from the hallucinations which it causes in some subjects. Dieters sometimes take amphetamine to cut their appetite, but most doctors consider this dangerous. Convicts used to chew the Benzedrine wafers from inhalers to get a quick lift, until the manufacturers changed the formula.

This year more than half of all U.S. convictions of druggists for illegal sale of prescription items have involved amphetamine. On the FDA's list, goof balls are pushing barbiturates as the worst under-the-counter drug menace. Many doctors, the FDA believes, prescribe amphetamine too freely, not recognizing the danger from its misuse. And Killer Hall told Investigator Pruitt that his technique was to hand the druggist a $20 bill and say, "This is my prescription." He added: "For $20 most anyone can buy bennies."

*Overall name for a group of closely related chemicals sold under several trademarks, e.g., Benzedrine and Dexedrine.

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