Dec. 29.
The concentrated essence of the wisdom of many decades might }help to present the opium issue in readily understandable form. Opium has been the convenient subject of admonition for many pens during the last hundred years. When in doubt, the esta ist turns to opium, with or without apologies to De Quincey. When not in doubt the leader-writer in-wokes the name of Geneva, couples with it that of Malwa and suddenly remembers that, in exactly a {year from the present' month, India will altogether cease the export of Jopium for other than medical purposes. China seems very remote {from these considerations. Just as speeches at Geneva on the opium! traffic in China appear to have fuittle relation to the facts nere, Opium is objected to by public opinion in China as a drug which is definitely harmful to those who, become addicts to its use in some form or other. The younger /generation of China may not take to opium as freely as its predecessors but it does unfortunately run the risk of succumbing to the blandishments of the sellers of an even more harmful drug, heroin, The market for opium is large, Canton and Shanghai are the chief customers for Yunnan and Szechuan, respectively. OMcially the production and sale of opium are against the law. Actually a number of provinces depend on the revenue derived from the sale of opium. Kweichow, for example, estimated to derive over 60 per cent. of its revenue from the tra sit dues on the opium passing through that Province from Yunnan to Canton. The sale of opium. in public is prohibited. Ant!-aug regulations have been promulgated. They have lately been made more 'The death penalty, urder these regulations, can be awarded to manufacturers and transporters "noxious drugs", to dealers in such drugs, to persons who provide drug' injections or keep a place for smoking drugs, to Jaddicts, who having been subyccted to 'a "cure" relapse into the habit, to officials who protect or receive bribes from offenders and persons who "make false acjcusations against others." The Nanking Anti-Narcotic—Committee reports that 204 persons have been executed for drug-Jdealing during the past year. This Jdoes not take into account the Jexecutions of "uncured" addicts to Jwhich occasional references are made in the press. In Kiangsu a kind of government monopoly of the sale of opium exists. It seems to be. the soundest way of dealing with 8 commodity, the production of which cannot be stopped, under present conditions, by the' general issue of a prohibition. At Porch, the frontier town which is the big distributing centre for opium received from Yunnan into Kwangsi, a similar policy is suggested by the report that the Opium Suppression Bureau has now a suitably impressive building for the handling of the consien~ ments of the dru received under JGovernment auspices. The farmer Jgrows poppy in place of cotton because he can get a better ence for the plant which produces the, drugs—torbidden on one hand and. licensed on the other. The tax-collector would be quite happy if the revenue from land under cotton or rice were as large as that Jand under poppy. The" provincial authorities, especially those inclined to disdain conventional methods of collection, are not dis-Posed to welcome the abolition of the opium trafic for it would probably eliminate the last of the taxes not covered by the Central Government's consolidation scheme.
From this rather random array of trends and tendencies, it 18 Dos sible to arrive at some diffident impressions. 'The Government—provincially and centrally—disapproves strongly of the opium fraffc, because it undermines the stamina of the people and incidentally does China no particular credit in the world outside, But the Government finds iteclf' quite unable at the outset to dispense with the revenue accruing from the opium. The policy of prohibition is a handicap and a definite source of confusion, The promulgation of stringent laws. to penalize traMickers and addicts is in a sense a formal recognition of the propriety of abolition for which, now, a six-year plan is proposed. ''The treatment of addicts in specially prepared clinics is obviously a proper course. It cannot be expected to touch more than a fringe of the sufferers. The execution method does not commend itself to the practical mind which—leaving humanitarian considerations out of account—is apt to point the finger of blame more firmly to the trafticker, the gangster and the "dope king"! China possesses medical experts who can fully advise the authorities on the subject of addie-Mien to drug-taking. She hag financial experts who can suggest the slow but certain process by {which the revenue from opium jean be replaced—after several yeare—by other and more respectable collections. She has at the head of affairs' men and women [who are earnestly desirous of enforcing the moral objections to Indulgence of the—drug-tarer's habits. They, taking into their confidence the practical men of medicine and finance, can surely work to end the present medley of paradoxes. No spectacular feat can be performed, for uncomfurtable facts have to be admitted, faced and allowed to work out their own damnation, But, least, there would be a prospect of terminating the depressing camoufage, inconsistency, contradictions and self-deceptions' which hamper the zealous reformer and adminis~ trator alike,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.