A RIVAL TO OPIUM SMOKING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXVII, Issue 287, 6 December 1893, Page 1

A RIVAL TO OPIUM SMOKING.

# From a Western poiufc of view there is one great drawback to opium smoking —it takes too mfich time. Western hurry seems, however, to be gradually permeating the vices of the JUast, and now the naorphiue eyriuge rivals the opium pipe, it we may believe a reporb which reaches the British Medical Journal from Hong Koag. The practice has been known for some time in Shanghai, and some six mouths ago it was brought to Hong Kong, where there are some 20 houses in which a regular trade in it is openly carried on. Kich | house has, on an average, 50 clients, who call iv the morning and in the evening to take their dose. An injection is much cheaper than a smoke, and,' primarily, no doubt, that is the reason of its rapid popularity. Curiouely enough, the pretence is that it is used as a cure for the vice of opium smoking, to whioh, however, it would seem to havo about the same relation as v whisky bar has to a beer saloon. The immediate happiness of an injection, which can be had without the loss of time, the public exposure, oi' the loathsome associations of the opium deD, is a far more dangerous temptation than tbe more slowly-acting and more expensive pipe. Truly in this matter John Chinaman is jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire.