The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, JUNE, 7, 1911. THE OPIUM TRAFFIC.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 91, 7 June 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, JUNE, 7, 1911. THE OPIUM TRAFFIC.

The announcement recently made that an agreement had been readied between Britain and China which will practically end the opium traffic created considerable excitement in India, the crux of the problem appearing to be—shall India bo allowed to coerce China to take her opium for the sake of the Indian revenue? “The facts are of the simplest and speak for themselves. The Indian Government, holds a. lucrative monopoly in the manufacture and sale of opium,’* says the London “Daily News.” “We had three wars with China in order to compel her, by the Treaty of Tientsin hi 1800, to legalise the import of opium, which had previously been contraband. In 1869 China’ appealed but in vain, for the abolition of this dangerous traffic. In despair, the prohibition of poppy growth, which had hitherto prevailed in China, was relaxed in order to drive out the Indian drug. The result .was dreadful. Opium-smoking became the national scourge. With the national awakening in China a new era dawned. The trade was condemned by a resolution of the Liberal House of Commons on Hay 30th 1906.- In prompt response, an anti-opium edict was issued from Pekin the following September. So miraculous has been the result that the poppy is rapidly disappearing from China. The growth has diminished by nearly seventy per cent, and the disappearance of tno homegrown product is within sight. The opium dons have been suppressed practically everywhere throughout this great empire. The history of the world cannot show such a revolution of national character in so short a period. The main points of this agreement were;— (1) That the importation of Indian opium would cease as soon as the cultivation of opium ceased in China. (2) That in the jneanwhile the duty on imported opium might

bo increased threefold. (3) That the accumulated stocks of Indian opium, amounting to about 20,000 chests, might he sold without a time limit, but that the Indian imports would bo correspondingly decreased. China in the last three years has reduced her cultivation of opium by about seventy per cent,” the “Daily News” continues. “It is therefore almost certain that within the next two years or even less the poppy will no longer be grown in China, and that consequently in accordance with the projected treaty the lucrative traffic from India will automatically lie brought to an end. The most strenuous resistance, it appears, is being offered by the Indian Government to the efforts of the Home authorities to put an end to this national crime, condemned as it has been by the Imperial Parliament itself and every party and section of ooinion in England.”