"BLACK SMOKE"

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1924, Page 6

"BLACK SMOKE"

IS THERE AN OPIUM RING? CUSTOMS OFFICIAL'S' EXPERIENCES. (»X TEIEGIUPH—SPECIAL TO THE POST.) AUCKLAND, This Day. "I have been seriously assured by Chinese that there k a well-financed organisation outside this country that has in operation a system for supplying certain agents in New Zealand with opium, and I have been equally strongly assured by other Chinese that such is not the case," declared a Customs official to an Auckland "Star" reporter, when discussing the recent seizure of opium on a vessel at Wellington. , The officer stated that his personal opinion was that there really was in existence such an organisation which distributed "black smoke" to the countries of the Pacific, including New Zealand. In many years he has had a deal of experience of smuggling, but he had never heard anything from many secret sources that op'en from time to time to revenue officers that would enable him to say definitely there was anything in the statement from Wellington tliau a Chinese syndicate operating from Calcutta was responsible for opium distribution in Australasia. Customs officers knew that a deal of opium got into this country, and that it was cleverly smuggled, but proof of the assertions about an "opium ring" was entirely lacking. It was mostly by chance, he added, that the discovery of smuggling was made, as instance the chance find of opium in an Indian's shop at Ponsonby recently, leading to the seizure of a fair quantity of the drug, which had been smuggled in from Fiji. The recent find in Wellington, too, had been made through the Chinese carpenter of the steamer Sussex .carelessly carrying too much at the time when he was"" walking off the boat with it on his person As to the extent of the opium vice in Auckland this officer stated that his local experience had fully convinced him that it was confined almost solely to Chinese who had acquired the habit before they reached xVew Zealand. He nad not met it amongst NewxZenlandborn Chinese, and he had not known white men to take to the dru" in this country. He could remember "only on., case in which it had been found" that white women smoked opium in this city, and then they were not what niiuht be called opium addicts. They were thie« young girle whose chief passion was tofine dress They found their .way into"Chinese places, as a means of satisfying that passion, and incidentally they tried the effect of opium smoking. Practically the same opinion was given by an experienced police officer about the scope of the opium habit in Auckland. He had not met it in white men nor among the Now Zealand-born Chinese. Smoking of opium was strictly discouraged by the Chinese clubs or tongs in Auckland, and those who were addicted to the habit were most secretive about it.