THE OPIUM INDUSTRY

Evening Star, Issue 22632, 26 April 1937, Page 12

THE OPIUM INDUSTRY

EMPIRE IH THE BUSINESS CURIOUS POSITION The world’s Governments agree that opium smoking is one of the major evils afflicting mankind, and the League of Nations has taken the lead in endeavouring to suppress a habit which wrecks millions of lives in China, India, and other Asiatic countries, says a writer in the ‘ Ksws-Chronicle.’ Yet the Government of the Straits Settlements—a British Crown _ Colony, of which Singapore is the capital—is making a profit of over £1,000,000 per annum out of manufacturing and (retailing opium! ' In the Criminal Court at Singapore, Feng Hoc Nang stands in the dock charged with being found in possession of 36 tubes of illicit opium. The judge takes a serious view of the case; smuggling opium is by no means a rare offence at Singapore, where 80 per cent, of the whole population is Chinese. It must be stamped out. So Feng Hoc Nang goes to spend one year in Singapore’s prison. Yet, within five miles of that court, two model factories owned by .the Government of the Straits Settlements, controlled by the Excise and Customs Department in that British Crowh Colony, and run by British civil servants, are turning out 72,000,000 tubes of opium every year, and selling them to Chinese and other inhabitants of British Malaya, Borneo, Sarawak, and Hongkong. CURSE OF EOPPY. I have been through those two factories by special permission of the authorities and learned the secrets of the “ war ” which they are waging on the gangs who seek to get rich quick by selling “ bootleg ” opium. Great Britain has taken the lead in trying to stamp out the curse of the poppy in the Far East. Clinics where opium addicts can be cured of their cravings have been opened at Singapore and elsewhere within the Empire. Huge posters displayed on the_ hoardings denounce opium smoking as poison. But it is impossible to make opium smoking illegal in Colonies like the Straits Settlements, British Malaya, or Borneo, where large Chinese-born populations living under _ the Union Jack have brought the habit with them from China without bringing into existence a huge smuggling industry, with all its attendant evils. Further, it is impossible suddenly to cut off the supply of a reasonable quantity of the drug from Chinese accustomed to their smoke without harmful physical effects and grave social unrest. Faced with the choice of permitting opium to be sold without limit in British colonies with opium-smoking populations; or Government control, the authorities decided to enter the opium business for themselves.

They entered it to such good purpose that the two Government-owned opium factories at Singapore are turning out from five to six million tubes of the drug every month and selling them at a substantial profit. First, the two most amazing factories to be found within the British Empire were built and equipped—the Government opium factory and the Government opium packing plant. Then Government opium shops were opened for the retail sale of the drug, and a strict rationing system was introduced, RATION CARDS USED.

Every opium smoker has to be registered with the authorities and is supplied with a ration card, to which his photograph is affixed, entitling Jinn to a given quantity of opium per month —and no more. Thus, in the words of a Government official to me, “ every opium smoker gets a fair deal, while the unrestricted sale of the stuff is being stamped out.” There are about 60,000 registered opium smokers in the Straits Settlements, and tens of thousands more in the Federated Malay States, Borneo, and Hongkong; not all are Chinese; thousands of Malays and Indians have contracted the habit in the past. This great army of drug addicts forms the customers of those two factories where British Government officials toil for eight hours a day in tropical heat turning out opium by the ton. The manufacture of “ sweet dreams,” as the Chinese call it, begins at the Government opium factory on the outskirts of Singapore with the cutting up and soaking of the bales of raw opium in vats of water for 24 hours, ft is then filtered, boiled down, “fried” over a hot fire, and finally “ roasted.” The result of these operations is opium as the smoker uses it—a thick, black, treacle-like substance called “ chaudu ” which i,s so valuable at market prices, that one tin of it, holding about three quarts, is worth £SOO. At this point in its journey from the poppy-head to the smoker s pipe, the opium is transferred to the second factory—the Government packing plant.

This factory, staffed by British engineers and Chinese working girls, is organised according to tho very latest principles of labour-saving. There the opium ■ progresses from one machine to the next until those tins of “ treacle ” have been converted into millions of sealed tubes of “ chandu,” each containing exactly the quantity of opium prescribed as a ration. MANY MADE DAILY. First the “tubes” are stamped, under hydraulic pressure, out .of pellets composed of 90 per cent, tin and 10 per cent. lead. Working at full pressure, that factory produces .600,000 tubes daily, each three and one-half inches long, and accurate in size to within l-1000th of an inch.

Defective tubes ■ having been eliminated by another machine, the rest pass to the filling section, where machines are fed with opium at a pressure of 2251 bto the square inch._ Here the tubes are filled, each with its ration. Each machine automatically counts the number of tubes filled, and so accurate are they that when the factory is filling 300,000 tubes daily the loss of one tube can be traced instantly to a single machine, and to the two girls who operate it. Filling completed, the. tubes . are folded, fastened, and packed 200 to a box. The boxes are sealed in four places with the British Government seal, denoting that the contents are genuine, and legally issued “0.H.M.5.” opium. Any other opium found on British territory can be seized by .the police and the possessors heavily punished.

Despite this, the secret Government markings on seals and tubes have to be changed frequently to outwit traders in “forged opium.” Smuggled drugs are sold in tubes arid boxes which so closely resemble the Government that often only can tell which is genuine and which is fake. During the week that I visited these ‘ factories, plans were in hand to the shape of the tubes from round to six-sided in order to make the imitation of Government tubes more difficult.

Profits made by opium bootleggers are so great that, in the words of a high official at the Government Opium Packing Plant at _ Singapore, “ the marking of our genuine tubes has to be handled as carefully as the markings on a genuine bank-note.” "" Yet, when all precautions have/been taken, and despite frequent police raids, it is believed that there are some 20,000 unregistered opium addicts in Singapore alone buying .their'.supplies from smugglers. 2.' ..... MADE IN SECRET DENS. , The opium is thrown overboard from small ships outside Singapore harbour, and brought ashore by risiiing boats at night. It. is then manufactured in secret dens and. sold at less than the Government monopoly price,' which is the equivalent, of sevenpence for a tube containing sufficient “ chandu ’’ for four smokes. . Before I left the Government Opium Packing Plant the superintendent took me into ’ the opium .store. There were all of £60,000 worth of manufactured opium in that heavily-barred . room* waiting to be filled into the 6,000,000 tubes which represented the: “ orders ” in hand for one month. • • :

The lid was removed from orie of the “ treacle tins ” and I was invited-to smell £SOO worth of the dope which-is the curse of Asia. I smelt it, and hurriedly withdrew my nose. The one and only time I have smoked opium it gave me nightmare and made me ill. And opium by the ton isn’t any more attractive. Its heavy,' sickly incense, even when in a tin, may spell sweet dreams to a Chinese addict, but it needs a stronger stomach than is possessed by the average Englishman to enjoy them! “ How is trade?” I asked one of the officials in charge of the sale of -Government opium in the Straits Settlements.

“Business is good,” he answered. “ As more Chinese enter the territories we serve, so our orders increase.” Which sounds terrible but isn’t.

Each tube of Government opium is sold only to customers registered as entitled to their weekly ration after careful inquiries. And it is by no means easy to satisfy the authorities that you must have your pipe of opium— unless, that is, the applicant is _ newly arrived from China into a British territory and has obviously been accustomed to it for years.

If. at any time, any of these registered “ customers ” decide to stop wasting their money and shortening, their lives, by entering the Anti-Opium Clinic for a course of treatment, no one is more delighted than those British officials who spend their lives manufacturing opium. The vast majority of addicts, however, would steal, cheat, lie, and fight to* get supplies of the drug which holds them in its thrall. . ■ Hence the Government-owned opium shops and the busy machinery in the most amazing factories in the Empire, which if they don’t stamp out drugtaking, at least keen it withiip bounds and stop smugglers from making fortunes out of the misfortunes of their compatriots.