Perhaps the bigges: bombshell thrown by the U.S. into the recent Conference (the report goes on) was the proposal that all opium monopoly countries should, upon ratification of the present Convention, reduce their importation of raw' opium by 10 per cent. for period of ten years, and Rot to supplement the reduction by domes tically produced opium. This sounds very. reasonable in view of the preamble to the Hague Convention in which the signatory Powers declare that they are "deter~ mined to bring about the gradual suppression of the abuse of opium, morphia and cocaine, ete." Since 1912 when the Convention was signed by most of the monopoly Powers to the suggested termination of the opium traffic ten years hhence, is almost a quarter of a Jcentury, and who could interpret this as a burried progress? So far it has not been accepted and the opposition is great. The monopolies fare only being asked to do what the Philippines did in a third of the time suggested by the U.S. A Commission reported in 1904 in favour of the gradual restriction of importation of opium into the Philippines and a law came into force on March 1, 1908, which read "it shall be unlawful to import into the Philippine Islands opium in whatever form, except by the Government and for medical purposes only." Some smuggling has undoubtedly taker place since then, id it would be impcasible to. imagine otherwise with such a tong string of islands touching free opium-using territories on almost every side, but importation has been suppressed. In 1901 the Philippines imported 369,036 pounds of opium, and in 1921 192 pounds only, and that for medical purposes.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.