Mar. 10.
A few days ago the International Anti-Opium Association in Peking, which is an energetic body as well as careful about what it puts its name to, published through Reuter an account of the new Opium Monopoly Bureau which has been formed at Vladivostok, under the control of certain Japanese who were formerly in the opium trade at Dairen. The Bureau is stated to have paid to the Vladivostok Government Yen 250,000 for ''farm rights'' in the Maritime Provinces and to cover duties on imported opium during the first six months of the present year, The Bureau is also stated to have obtained the right to manufacture morphia and other narcotics; and inasmuch as the local Chinese and Korean demand in the Maritime provinces is comparatively insignificant, it is inferred that the Bureau's real object is to cultivate the lucrative but dastardly business of opium smuggling into China, which, from such a position, it may very easily do. In this connexion it is re-
March, 1921, and handed over the control of the trade to the municipal authorities, whose imports of opium have doubled those of the preceding year.
The story of opium in China is notorious and sad. Suppression is hardly even to be called a farce. It simply does not exist. In many provinces the military authorities are actually compelling farmers to: grow opium, first for the money that they have to pay for a licence to do so, secondly for the tax on the sales of opium. Not many lays ago a Reuter message from Peking actually warned the Chinese delegate to the forthcoming Geneva Opium Convention not to/the passage into China of parcels take provincial reports on opium suppression from local officials in China which the other delegates} would easily be able to prove untrue. With the revival of cultivation, smuggling has developed to an extent which can hardly even be guessed. The discovery of large consignments by the Customs officials has become so everyday an affair, that it scarcely occasions remark. Yet we know that it gives grave anxiety to the Customs authorities owing to the enormous temptation in the way of bribes, to which the smuggling exposes their subordinates.
It is greatly to the honour of the Service that the temptation has had 50 little effect as it has had. But, that does not alter the unfairness of exposing men on small salaries to the insinuating addresses of smugglers who can easily afford to give away thousands of dollars for the price of passing a consignment of the drug. Far worse, however, than the trade in opium jis that in morphia, cocaine and the' like.
It is comparatively easy to detect opium owing to its bulk and peculiar smell.
Morphia and; cocaine it is practically impossible to find; and as they more easily gain admittance so also are their effects more noxious on the consumer.
It is impossible to suggest any remedy for the revival of opium-growing in China, while she remains in her present condition. Not a few people say that the only practical solution is to confess frankly that it is beyond human powers to prevent Chinese from smoking opium and to make a Government monopoly of it. Apart from other considerations, the obstacle to that remedy is that China must first possess a Goyernment. But whether she has one or not, and whether her provin-there can be no two opinions that the smuggling is a disgrace which all foreign Governments ought sternly to suppress. It has regretfully to be added that in this trade the Japanese have made themselves notorious. At Tsingtao the profits derived by the military authorities from trade in narcotics were estimated to run into millions sterling. At Dairen the profits must have realized yet vaster sums, nor, as noted above, have matters been improved by the Government going out of the business. The Japanese Post Office has again and again been accused of providing a safe channel for of morphia and similar drugs, and we cannot recall that the charge has ever been denied. Formosa is pointed to as the home of morphia factories and Kobe as the centre of the transhipment of opium destined for China, What reformation there may have beea in these directions we do not know. Measures have boom brought forward in the Japanese Diet more than once in the past four or five years for the control of the trade in drugs. But tha: point to emphasize is that whereas: the Japanese people have again and again been widely placarded for their dealings in opium and narcotics in China during the past five years, those dealings do not appreciably diminish but, if the International Anti-Opium Association's report be true, only break out in new directions. We de not doubt for one moment that all thinking Japanese deeply deplore this disgrace which certain individuals bring upon the nation. But of that disgrace there is unhappily no question, and as sincere friends of Japan we earnestly hope that her Government will use the power it possesses to stop the trade, especially now when the recent settlement at Washington promises to inaugurate a new era of friendship and good feeling between Japan and China.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.