CHINESE SMUGGLERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLIII, Issue 9787, 1 February 1923, Page 3

CHINESE SMUGGLERS.

SOME STRANGE WILLS. Dai-ing adventures, hairbreadth escapes, and huge profits, to say nothing of every species of ingenuity and resourcefulness, are revealed! in the descriptions of the smuggling of noxious drugs into China which appear in "The War Against Opium," published by the International Anti-opium Association of Pekin.

While the association admits that owing to the disturbed state of the country there has been a revival of poppy-growing, estimated at aihout 10 per cent, of .what it wais> before its prohibition, the main is from the taking of morphine, heroin, and cocaine by millions of Chinese. Sir Frances Aglen, Inspector-Gener-al of the Chinese Maritime Customs, says: "Opium and other harmful druo;s are found hidden in coal cubicles, in coal cars, in the steel piping of railway cars, in the double ltoofs of carriages, behind panels in express trains, in the ventilators, among the car springs, in the brakes, in water-tight bags in the water tanks, and in the window frames.''

A visitor arriving with a bird in a cage proved to be a. smugerler, for the bottom of the cage is double. Even an "innocent" old woman was once suspected, and the basket of cat and kittens that she brought with her disclosed the fact that ' the kittens were dead and stuffed with morphia!