The Times FRIDAY. JULY 8, 1933, Drugs in China

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 159, 8 July 1938, Page 4

The Times FRIDAY. JULY 8, 1933, Drugs in China

One of tlie most sinister aspects of Japan's dealing 'with. China has been her encouragement of the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, and it is possible that more damage to human life in the great Oriental empire has resulted from this cause than from the aerial attacks on defenceless men, women and children. The League of Nations Advisory Committee mi the drug traffic has started preparations for an international conference on this menace to humanity. Tile key to the situation is the Far East, and for that very reason it is hardly likely that much progress will be made because Japan will be ill no mood either to co-operate or admit her culpability in the matter.

Most writers with any knowledge of the situation have condemned Japan’s methods of encouraging the use of opium and other drugs by the Chinese, “ft is now the experience of 25 years,” writes Mr. Morgan Young, a former editor of the “Japan Chronicle,” recently expelled from Japan, that wherever Japanese influence extends in China, so does Chinese drug-addiction, and where Japanese military dominance exists the trade is unrestricted.”

The principal motive behind Japanese encouragement of drug consumption is a financial one. There are, it has been estimated, 50,000,000 drum addicts in China; what their custom means to the Japanese drug industry can be gathered from the large contribution which opium revenues make to the public finances of other Far Eastern countries. Before the outbreak of the present war, one-tenth of the Nanking Government’s revenue was derived from its opium taxes; in the Straits Settlements, the opium monopoly has contributed as much as 55 per cent., and is now contributing 25 per cent., to revenue; in Mancliukuo, in the last year for which figures were published, the Japanese opium monopoly showed a profit of more than £1,000,000; and in Siam about 20 per cent, of public revenue comes from opium.

For Japan, opium is important iiot merely because of the profits from her opium monopolies in Manehukuo, Korea and Formosa, hut also because it is tie means of maintaining a Vast and flourishing export industry. But Japan’s deliberate encouragement of opium consumption is only one part, and not the worst part, of the story. There has lately been an immense increase in the Chinese consumption of heroin, morphia and cocaine—all of it imported from Japan or from sources controlled by Japan. Both physiologically and psychologically, these drugs are far more disastrous in their effects than opium, the evils of which have perhaps been somewhat exaggerated.

To recount the occasions On which the Japanese representatives pn the League Advisory Committee on the Drug Traffic have had the situation brought to their notice and have promised remedial measures would be both tedious and depressing. Lately, the Japanese Government lias been less disposed to admit its responsibility in the matter, which is usually coupled in the Japanese Press with ironical references to the Opium War and British hypocrisy. But it is clear that, whatever blame may attach historically to the Western Powers, none attaches to them now; all of them have ceased to supply narcotic drugs either to Japan or to China. All the drugs consumed in China are either produced there or imported from Japan.