THE CURSE OF THE POPPY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27273, 27 December 1949, Page 4

THE CURSE OF THE POPPY

One of the great humanitarian ventures undertaken by the old League , of Nations was the ■ endeavour to regulate and control the international traffic in narcotic drugs. Until Japan flagrantly violated the League of Nations Covenant and commenced to send huge quantities of opium into China, it appeared that the League of Nations was making real progress in reducing the illicit traffic in drugs produced in Eastern countries. The disruption of the war years provided an even more severe setback to the work, especially as several of the principal sources of the drug supply were comparatively undisturbed by the fighting elsewhere,- and the international smuggling gangs were able to work almost without hindrance. Since its inception the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs has been endeavouring to recover the lost ground. The aim of the commission is to secure unification of all existing agreements on the manufacture and distribution of drugs capable of producing addiction, and to limit the production of narcotic raw materials to the quantities required for medical and scientific purposes.

The first important step towards the goal of international control has been the signing of an agreement between the four, principal opium producers—lndia, Persia, Turkey and Yugoslavia—to restrict their production and to give control of the drug to Government monopolies. Other sources of the drug remain— Korea, China and Syria for instance —but if controls are firmly established in the main producing countries the operations of the smugglers will receive a severe check and an inestimable benefit will be conferred on thousands of people throughout the world. The traffic in opium has been a thriving one for at least 200 years. As long ago as 1783 Warren Hastings was denouncing this “ pernicious article,” but the rewards of the traffic were so rich that no measures of control could be devised. The war of 1840 between Great Britain and China was due to China’s determination to resist the importation of opium, - and Chinese Governments have never ceased to denounce the moral and economic evils of the opium traffic. By 1917, China had almost rid itself of opium addiction on a large scale, but the political strife which has continued almost uninterruptedly since that year has prohibited effective control, and China now possesses a greater number of addicts than any other country in the world. China is not, however, the only country that is sorely afflicted. The smuggling gangs operate in every country of the globe, and only determined action under the direction of a single world agency will put an end to their insidious work. A start has been made, but the task is a prodigious one, and many years must pass before the cultivation of the poppy can be brought under complete and effective control.