POPPY JUICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 103, 4 May 1931, Page 3

POPPY JUICE.

SUPPRESSION IN CHINA. SMUGGLING FROM JAPAN. DIFFICULTIES OF CONTROL. "China has always stood for total suppression of opium, except for medical and scientific purposes," said Dr. T. Z. Koo, the distinguished Chinese at present visiting Auckland. He speaks with intimate knowledge of the opium traffic, having sat at the second Opiiru Conference called by the League of Nations in 1925, as the representative of 34 Chinese

organisations. Dr. Koo said that in 1906 an Imperial edict was issued commanding the total abolition of the use of opium within 10 years, and restricting the cultivation of the poppy. The breakdown of the central government, after suppression had almost become an accomplished fact, led to the secret cultivation of the poppy in certain provinces, and that was still going on. There was also a great deal of smuggling, especially from Japan. Persia was growing large quantities and there were Government monopolies in all the islands close to the Straits Settlement.

Dr. Koo eaicl the League had not accomplished a great deal, except in respect to the control at the place of manufacture. Control, it was held, must be at the source of manufactured supply. In recent years, Japan had manufactured large quantities of heroin, and. a close watch was being kept for smugglers, but they were as difficult of detection ae the' bootleggers of the United States.