Drugging a Nation

government-owned and government-operated factories, and sells it at monthly auctions. Let me also recall to the reader that four-fifths of this opium is prepared to

um traffic in all its branches, we are able to set not only the findings of other governments, such as those of Japan, the Philippines, and Australia, which have opium problems of their own to deal with, but also the cu

IN A GOVERNMENT

magnificent, panoplied government of India gone bankrupt, or so embarrassed as to be calling upon the Home government for aid, would not please it at all. Of the two evils, debauching China or gravely impairing the finances of India, there has been reason to believe that it would prefer debauching China. That, at least, is what successive governments of Britain and of India seem to have concluded. It has seemed wiser to endure a known quantity of abuse for stic

nty-eight thousand questions, and publishing two thousand pages (double columns, close print) of evidence, arrived at some remarkable conclusions. "Opium," says the Royal Commission, "is harmful, harmless, or even beneficial, according to the measure and discretion with which it is used.... It is [in India] the universal household remedy.... It is extensively administered to infants, and the practice does not appear

etary of State for India, should have said in Parliament (May, 1906)-"I do not wish to speak in disparagement of the Commission, but somehow o

was "morally indefensible"-officially so. It was agreed that the Indian government should be "urged" to cease to grant licenses for the cultivation of the poppy and for the sale of opium in British India. This was interesting-even gratifying. There was but one obstacle in the way of p

ent could not resist or evade. Sure of the anti-opium majority, the new resolution, "having regard to the opinion expressed by the vote of this House on the 10th of April, 1891, that the system by which the Indian opium revenue is raised is morally indefensible,... and recognizing that the people of India ought not to be called upon to bear the cost involved in this change of policy," demanded that "a Ro

opium, and demanding a Royal Commission to report as to (1) Whether the growth of the poppy and the manufacture and sale of opium in British India should be prohibited.... (4) The effect on the finances of India of the prohibition ... taking into consideration (a) the amount of comp

d for a commission merely to arrange the necessary details. Mr. Gladstone's resolution raised the whole question again, and instructed the commission not only to call particular attention to the cost of prohibition (the shrewd premier knew his public!), not only to find out if the victims of opium in India wished to continue the ha

his hands. The best way to straighten out this tangle would seem to be to consult the report of Mr. Gladstone's commission. This commission, on its arrival in India, found no trace of a policy of suppressing the trade. Sir David Balfour, the head of the Indian Finance Department, said to the commission: "I was not aware that that was the policy of the Home government until the statement was made.... The policy has been for some time to sell

ctions not, as had been intended, to arrange the details of a plan for stopping the opium traffic, but with instructions to consider whether

tually, since 1891, manufacturing pills of opium mixed with spices for the children and infants of India. If the Indian government, now at last brought to an accounting, wished to keep the opium business going, they could do two things-they could see that the "right" sort of evidence was given to the commission, and they could try to influence the com

commission was to defend a "morally indefensible" condition of affairs in order to mai

contained the following passage: "We shall be prepared to suggest non-official witnesses, who will give independent evidence, but we cannot undertake to specially search for witnesses who will give evidence against opium. We presume this will be done by the Anti-Opium Society." This message had been sent in August, 1893, but it was not made public until the 18th of the following November. On November 20th Lord Lansdowne sent a

gh to say that Lord Lansdowne and his Indian government ordered that all evidence should be submitted to the commission through their offices; that only pro-opium evidence was submitted; that a government official travelled with the commission and openly worked up the evidence in advance; that the minority members were hindered and hampered in their attempts at real investigation, and were shadowed by de

how it passes out of the hands of the British government into the currents of trade; how it is carried along on these currents-small quantities of it washing up in passing the Straits and the Malay Archipelago-to China; how it blends at t

d them out. They swarmed southward to Australia until Australia closed the doors on them. They swarm to-day into the Philippines and into Malaysia. In the Straits Settlement, in a total population of a little over half a million, more than half (282,000) are Chi

ry which has had a remarkable opportunity to view the opium menace at short range. What Japan thinks about opium, what Australia and the Transvaal and the United States think, what the Philippines think, is more to

ort is accepted to-day as the most authoritative survey

timony to the reality of the evil effects of opium can be found than the horror with which China's next-door neighbour views it.... The Japanese to a man fear opium as we fear the cobra or the rattlesnake, and they despise its victims. There has been no moment in th

are Chinese. So rigid are the provisions of the law that it is sometimes, especially in interior towns, almost impossible to secure opium or its alkaloids in cases of medical necessity.... The go

ch falls short is destroyed. The accepted opium is sealed in proper receptacles and sold to a selected number of wholesale dealers (apothecaries) who in turn provide physicians and retail dealers with the drug for medicinal

f the police is such that even when opium is successfully smuggled in, it cannot be smoked without detection. The pungent fumes of cooked opium are unmistakable, and betray the user almost inevitably.... There

Japan think

pium prohibition in the Philippines, which went into effect March 1, 1908.

Petitions bearing 200,000 signatures were presented to the parliament, and in response a law was enacted absolutely prohibiting the importation of opium, except for medicinal uses, after January 1, 1906. All the state governments of Australia lose revenue by this prohibition. The voice of the Australian people was apparently ex

lia and New Zealand

a recognition that the use of opium is an evil for which no financial gain can compensate, and which America will not allow her citizens to encourage even passively." By the terms of this treaty, citizens of the United States are forbidden to "import opium into any of the open ports of China, or transport from one open port to any other open port, or to buy and sell opium in any of the open ports of

ry and more, Anglo-Indian officials have been kept busy explaining that opium is a heaven-sent blessing to mankind. It is quite possible that many of them have come to believe the words they have repeated so often. Why not? China was a long way off-and India certainly did need the money. The poor offi

MAN TRAVELS, OP

to the United States, Photographed

aal after the Boer War, along with those 70,000 Chinese labourers. The result can only be described as an opium panic. I quote, regar

illustration of the old proverb a

the Transvaal. He urged that 'measures should be taken for the immediate stopping of the traffic.' On 6th October, an ordinance was issued, restricting the importation of opium to regis

a permit, is liable to similar penalties. Stringent rights of search are given to police,

inese Labour Importation Ordinance, 1904, has been amended to penal

Walk about, of a sunny afternoon, in Kensington Gardens. Watch the ruddy, healthy children sailing their boats in the Round Pond, or playing in the long grass where the sheep are nibbling, or running merrily along the well-kept borders of the Serpentine. They are splendid youngsters, these little Britishers. Their skins are tanned, their eyes are clear, their little bodies are compactly knit. Each child has its watchful nurs

an, no such marked effect on the Chinese infant as it has on the British infant. I have met this "conservative" pro-opiumist many times on coasting and river steamers and in treaty port hotels. I have been one of a group about a rusty little stove in a German-kept hostelry where this question was thrashed out. Your "conservative

hould verge on the painful, that, I am afraid, will be the fault of the facts. It is a picture of the hugest empire in the whole world, fighting a curse which has all but mastered it, turning for aid, in sheer despair, to the government,