OPIUM TRAFFIC

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 174, 24 June 1926, Page 10

OPIUM TRAFFIC

GRADUAL EXTINCTION. INDIAN GOVERNMENT DECISION. LONDON, June 11. The Indian Office announces that the Government of India with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, Lord Birkenhead, has now decided to fix ten years as the period within r which exports of opium from India ! for other than strictly medical purposes shall be progressively and finally j extinguished. It will be recalled that in the House of Commons on March 8 Earl Winterton, Secretary for India, announced that the Government of India intended, subject to the approval of the Legislature, to carry out this policy. He stated then that the period within which the extinction would take place had not yet been fixed, and that the position of cultivators was one of the factors that must be taken into account in defining it. PROGRESSIVE REDUCTION. Resolutions approving the Government of India’s new policy were adopted by the Indian Council of State and the Legislative Assembly on March 16 and 18 respectively. As a result of the decision now reached by the Government of India, fixing ten years as period of progressive extinction, exports of opium for other than strictly medicinal purposes will be reduced by 10 per cent, yearly, beginning in 1927, so that the last export will take place in 1936. During this period exports will be under the system of direct sale of the Governments of importing countries, the sale of opium by public auction at Calcutta being finally discontinued with effect from April 17, 1926.