OPIUM AS ALLY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 5, 6 July 1939, Page 17

OPIUM AS ALLY

JAPANESE IN CHINA

DISCUSSION AT GENEVA

Progress made by the Chinese authorities in suppression of the opium trade in areas under their control and the worsening of the situation in Japan-ese-controlled areas in China were cited at a meeting of the Opium Committee of the League of Nations., said a message from Geneva to the "Manchester Guardian" oii May 21..

Dr. Hoo Chi-tsai, the Chinese Government delegate, stated that military operations in China have not prevented the.continuance of the Chinese Government's campaignl" against narcotics. In fact, he said, 'military exigencies had made it all the more necessary for the Chinese to light the abuse of narcotics—the worst enemy of their natural resistance. China had to make every possible use: of .her economic resources in order to endure a long war, and thus poppy cultivation had been replaced by more necessary crops. Dr. Hoo detailed the measures which had been taken for the suppression of illicit tr?ffic and the cure of drug addicts. Unfortunately, improvement along this line did not extend to those areas under Japanese control. In parts of China occupied by.Japanese troops a disgraceful state of things existed. The systematic poisoning of the Chinese people by the invader had a treble object—first, to secure for cer^ tain parties resources to cover the expense of the invasion; secc/idly, to provide subsistence for undesirable Japanese elements whom the Japanese wished to keep away from Japan; and, thirdly, as a means of weakening the Chinese resistance and making- use of traitors among the Chinese. AMERICAN EVIDENCE. Mr. Stuart Fuller, United State 3 Government expert in a long statement on the situation in the Japanese controlled areas/ said that the problem, was one of great concern to the United States Government. Since last June, when he had stressed before the committee the deterioration in all areas under Japanese control during the years 1937-38. the United States Government had continued to receive alarming information from official sources on the narcotics traffic. Dealing in detail with reports on drug traffic in Manchuria and Jehol, Tientsin. Peiping (Peking). Nanking, Hankow, and Canton, Mr. Fuller' declared that Japanese authorities were not taking effective steps to co-operate in the suppression of the illicit drug traffic in areas under their control. He concluded by v citing measures which, in the opinion of the United States Government, would ameliorate the narcotics situation in the Far East The* requirements; were that the .Japanese Government should exercise a restraining ipfluence' on its nationals in the occupied areas in China and on .the regimes established in those areas to prevent the importation of opium.l the shipment of opium from one port to another, the manufacture and distribution of opium, and the export of opium nut of those areas into other countries. The Iranian authorities should take effective steps to suppress, the illicit traffic in onium from Iran to the Far East, and the Portuguese Government should co-operate in the international campaign against the: illicit traffic.' in narcotics, and thus prevent colony from being:3.ised as a D&seVfor such'traffic. , '}: ') "'■■.[' ,■■•'■' . '■'■