OPIUM SMOKERS.

Evening Star, Issue 12875, 26 July 1906, Page 6

OPIUM SMOKERS.

In 901 opium-smoking was made illegal in New Zealand. As a consequence it is illegal to have opium in one’s possession in a form suitable for smoking, and the statute laying this down is a highly penal one. Prom time to time the Dunedin police make a raid on the Chinese quarters in Walker street, where suspected opinmsmokers and opinm purveyors mostly dwell This morning Air Graham, S.M., was called upon to decide whether Ah Young was guilty of haring in Ids possession yesterday evening a quantity of opium in a form suitable for smoking. To assist him in eliciting the evidence Station-sergeant King appeared on the prosecuting side, and Mr Hanlon for the defendant, who pleaded not guilty. The facts as stated were that last evening Detective M‘Leod and Constable entered a place in Walker street and found the defendant on a bed in a room which was occupied by other Chinamen. The defendant, when questioned, told the detective that the clothes round the bed were Iris, and the detective found in a waistcoat which the defendant claimed a quantity of opium in a small horn box. Pipes were under the bed. This evidence was corroborated by Constable M‘Hohn. It was also shown that the accused bad keys in his possession, though he denied that lie was the owner or occupier of the premises,—The defence amounted to this ; that the waistcoat did not belong to defendant, nor the opium, and that he did not say that they did; that his English was very much of the kind called “pidgoon,” and that he had thought the detective referred to the bedclothes when he mentioned the clothes round about. Naturally defendant did not know to whom the waistcoat did belong. He was not the occupier of the house, and did not pay the rent. The keys were in his possession because the tenant had gone down to see what the defendant called “ the tnanograph ” —meaning the biograph. Mr Graham did not consider that the evidence justified a conviction, and the case was dismissed.