TRAFFIC UNABATED

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 61, 14 March 1927, Page 9

TRAFFIC UNABATED

PROBLEM FOR LEAGUE

REPORT TO COUNCIL

(British OiScial Wireless.)

RUGBY, 13th March,

The League Council yesterday considered the report of the Advisory Committee on the trafiie iv opium and other noxious drugs. M. Zaleski, the rapporteur, said that illicit traffic had not appreciably abated, and he was sure that the Council would agree to the proposal made by the British representative on the Advisory Committee that it was important to discover the sources of supply open to illicit traffickers. Apparently enormous quantities of noxious drugs were being exported to China by post, and the Council considered it advisable that European Governments should examine this fact. These drugs got into illicit channels in two ways. Either they might be exported to countries where there was no adequate control or they were exported to manufacturing or distributing countries for boria fide purposes and there passed into the hands of illicit traffickers. In either case the only possible remedy was for the countries which had undertaken to exercise control to do so effectually.

The Council empowered the chairman of the Advisory' Committee to summon a special meeting of that body to deal with this aspect of the problem. The Opium Convention of; February, 1925, cannot come into force until seven States represented on. the Council, two of which must be permanent members, have ratified it. Great Britain was .the first member of the Council to ratify the , Convention, and now Germany has done so:

M. Briand assured the Council that France would ratify within "the next few days. Salvador has done so and Rumania has adhered to interdiction, while Netherlands has also practically ratified it. Senor Scialoja told the Council that Italy wo.uld likewise be ready to do so shortly.