“BLACK SMOKE.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 October 1924, Page 15

“BLACK SMOKE.”

IS THERE AN OPIUM RING? CUSTOMS OFFICIAL’S EXPERT J SSNCES. " , • .1 have been seriously assured by Chinese that there is a well-iinazicecl f organisation outside this country that has in operation a system for supplving. certain agents in Nov/ Zealand , with opium, and I have been equally strongly assured by other Chinese that such is not the case,” declared a Ous- . toms official to an Auckland Star reporter, when discussing tlie recent seizure of opium on a vessel at Welling- 1 ton. ’ 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 lie has had a deal of experience of smuggling, hut he had never heard anything from many secret sources that open from time to time to revenue officers that would enable him to say definitely there was anything in the statement from Wellington that 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 the 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 a 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 New Zealand. He had not met it amongst New Zealandborn Chinese, and he had not known white men to take to the drug in this country. He could remember only one ease in which it had been found that white women smoked opium in this city, and then they were not what might he called opium addicts. They, were three young girls whose chief passion was for fine dress. They found tlioir 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 New Zealand-born Chinese. Smoking of opium was strict, ly discouraged bv the Chinese clubs . or tongs in Auckland, and those who . were addicted to the habit were most : secretive about it.