Drugging a Nation

m the Imperial Court at Peking which states

nan, Kweichow, Shansi, and Kanghuai abound in its product, which, in fact, is found everywhere. Now that it is decided to abandon opium smoking within ten years, the limi

fty million opium-smokers-mean three or four times the population of Gr

he document. No accurate estimate of the number of opium victims in China is obtainable; but it is possible to combine the impressions which have been set down by reliable observers in different parts of the "Middle Kingdom," and thus t

e are about forty-two million people in Szechuen Province; and they not only raise and consume a very great quantity of opium, they also send about twenty thousand tons down the Yangtse River every year for use in other provinces. The report of o

e population given over to its abuse. The ravages it is making in men, women, and children are deplorable.... I was q

nd of almost every station in life. The secretary of a life insurance company which does a considerable business up and down the coast told me that, roughly, fifty per cent of the Chinese who apply for insurance are opium-smokers. Another bit comes from a man who

per cent.; officials and their staff, ninety per cent.; actors, prostitutes, vagrants, thieves, ninety-five per cent." The labourers and farmers, the real strength of China, as of every other land, had not yet been overwhelmed-but they were going under, even then. The most startling news to-day is from these lower classes, even from the

roys. The quaintness of the language does not, I think, impair its effectiveness and its power as a protest: "China can never become strong and stand shoulder and shoulder wi

ngs to mind other attempts in Europe and America, to check and control vice and depravity-attempts which have never, I think, been wholly successful-and one begins to understand the discouraging immensity of the task which China has undertaken. Really, to "stop using opium" would mean a very rearranging of the agricultural plan of the empire. It would make necessary an immediate solution of China's transportatio

he India-grown British drug was pushed and smuggled and bayoneted into China during a century of desperate protest and even armed resistance from these yellow people, it has been a popular argument to assert that the Chinese have only themselves to blame for the "demand" that made the trade possible.

t in the tiny bowl of his pipe, holds it over a lamp, and draws a few whiffs of the smoke deep into his lungs. It seems, at first, a trivial thing; indeed, the man who is well fed and properly housed and clot

bably the majority of the victims take it up as a temporary relief; many begin in early childhood; the mother will give the baby a whiff to stop its crying. It is a social vice only among the upper classes. The most notable outward effect of this indulgence is the resulting physical weakness and lassitude. The opium-smoker cannot

m the packsaddles to mix with this dross. The clerk earning from twenty-five to fifty Mexican dollars a month will frequently spend from ten to twenty dollars a month on opium. The typical confirmed smoker is a man who spends a considerable part of the night in smoking himself to s

joy sleep; (3) wait for his turn when sharing his pipe with his friends; (4) rise early; (5) be cured if sick; (6) help

et" was developed. England did not set out to ruin China. One finds no hint of a diabolical purpose to seduce and destroy a wonderful old empire on the other side of

dian government raises the poppy in the rich Ganges Valley (more than six hundred thousand acres of poppies they raised there last year), manufactures it in gove

or swaying mule litter, along the sunken roads and the hills of western and northwestern China, the havoc and misery wrought by the "white man's smoke," the "foreign dust," becomes unpleasantly evident. Som

East. The Chinese race is engaged in a fight to a