A RIVAL TO OPIUM SMOKING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9367, 25 November 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

A RIVAL TO OPIUM SMOKING.

From a Western point of view there is one srreab drawback to opium smoking—it takes too much time. Western hurry seems, however, to be gradually permeating even the vices of the East, and now the morphine syringe rivals the opium pipe, if we may believe a report which reaches the British Medical Journal from Hong Kong. The practice has been known for some time in Shanghai, and some six months ago it was brought to Hong Hong, where there are now some 20 houses in which a regular trade in ib is openly carried on. Each house has, on an average, fifty clients, who call in the morning and the evening and bake their dose. An injection is much cheaper than a smoke, and, primarily, no doubt, that is the reason of its rapid popularity. Curiously enough, the pretence is that it is used as a cure for the vice of opium smoking, to which, however, ib would seem to have about the same relation as a 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.Jor tishe loathsome associations of the opium den, is a far more dangerous temptation than the more slowly-acting and more en pensive pipe. Truly in this matter John Chinaman is jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire.