The Opium Problem.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18303, 10 February 1925, Page 8

The Opium Problem.

The withdrawal of the American delegation from the Opium Conference now sitting in Geneva it unpleasant, and, on the facts so far cabled, unjustifiable. We do not think many of our readers would care to defend Britain's connexion with opium during the last century and a half, but the case is quite different during the last decade and a half. Everybody has heard about the wars Britain has fought to keep the opium traffic going in China, but it is not so widely known that Britain agreed twenty years ago to reduco the importations by 10 per cent, each year for ten years, and that by 1917 her regular trade with China had wholly ceased. Smuggling, of course, went on, and still goes on, but Britain can look back Without much attSiety over the last fifteen years. I?hc United States, It is true, has a better record still. Though its zeal to end the traffic in opium, in which it has no financial interest, has excited the obvious retort that its consciqhce is more sensitive to foreign sources of revenue than to its own, we may safely enough say that its War on opium is sincere and honourable. Early in the present century it brought about a conference at Shanghai, ih which teli nations participated, while most of tho world conferences that have met dined have been called together on America's initiative. It is Hot unreasonable of Washington, now that tho initiative liafl been taken by the League of Nations, to expect that the American delegates will still play & leading part, but it savours of nilfrOWfleiis and bigotry to make acceptance of their chief demands the price of thoir continued participation. Tlio pried of these demands to Britain means one-ninth of the revenue of India, one-third of the revenue of Hongkong, and one-half of the revenue of the Straits Settlements. To Turkey and Persia and Serbia and Greece and Bulgaria and Egypt it moans ending a trafiic which cannot very well be expressed in pounds sterling, but which in weight is at least a million and a half pounds every yfear, and the difference between comfort and temporary ruin to tens of thousands of peasant cultivators. To ask that the economic revolution the end of sucli a trade will cause should be spread over fifteen instead of over ten years is no proof that Britain and her "com"panions in sin" do not intend to reform. So far as Britain at least is concerned there can be no reasonable doubt in Wnshington that her desire tb Wash iier hands of opium is sincere. We might just as well argue thftt America's attitude can only be a Sanctimonious pose Whdfl she allows her people to use 36 grains of opium per head per year, against England's three grains, Germany's two, and Italy's one. The fact is that every good Briton .is just as miserable over his country's financial entanglement ih so softy a trade as every good AiftGflcan is over the failure of his country's courts and police —and far more his country's public opinion—to stop such a ruiilouS consumption. A cynic might even say that what America demaiids is that Britain should throw ftttay Sotne Hiillifliiß of pounds in rfevfenue evefy year in order that America should B&e&pc the expenditure Of the £150,000 it costs to enforce tho anti-narcotic laws. That is Hot America's purpose, or even a reedgnisabie misrepresentation of it; but it would be no ibore outrageous to say that it is thaft to explain Britain's purpose as a desire to retaiii dirty money.