To the Eiitor of the "Nonrw-Cutwa Dairy News"
Sim,—I have to thank Dr, K. T.
Chung for his correction of figures regarding the amount of opium and other narcotics produced in and smuggled into China.
Even the corrected figures are appalling in amount. But if Mr. Tong Shao-yi is correct in his estimate, that three-quarters China's total narcotic bill is for locally produced opium, then, Sir, yew are, in the main, right in' say-that the problem is indigent ous.
Tt is no use at all fur Messrs Chu and Chung—or anyone else, to try and throw dust in the eyes of the public on this question. To figure, some people, and fare not strangers to red herring across the trail.'
Dr. Chung wish to divert attention from China wien he talks about Indian opium? Yet kis own figures the total am opium consumed in is 15,000 tons. quote him further he estimates "tie total amount of ile opium ax over 100 tons." When we consider that tis includes Turkish and Persian opium which is not under Government _restral rely. the t coming from India ix but a trickle compared with the 14,900 tons produced in China.
Further, there are millions of Chinese, many of them still in their' teens, and with whom the habit is new, and not retained from the past, before the stoppage of the legal foreign trade, who are ad ed to replum today ("and other ices are added"), These pdsple did not learn the habit in the South Sea Islands or the Straits Settlements, but right here under the benign government of the great Marshal Sun Chuan-fang and others of China's gallant rulers.
By the way, is not the Marshal, and ko has other Chinese to back im up including Dr, Chung, drag ging the herring, when he complains of divided authority in dealing with the question, on account of the existence of foreign Settlements? Let tus see that he means business by making some attempt to stop the traffic in opium, produced and con-lined in his own territory. Sedan.
airmen have told the writer that it coats them 50 cents. per "day for opium. This would' be about their average wages.
There is another point which must not be orerlovked:—namely, that morphine and other narcotics, on of greater price, are assent man's Tuxury and will be consumed proportionately fewer people. Opium is the poor man's smoke; therefore dollar for dollar, opium, being used by a greater number of people, is the greater evil.
With apologies for the length of this letter, Tam, ete, Provincial, June 17, 1926,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.