BRITAIN SEEKS TO STOP OPIUM SMUGGLING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18545, 20 August 1928, Page 4

BRITAIN SEEKS TO STOP OPIUM SMUGGLING.

URGES LEAGUE TO SET UP A COMMISSION.

(United Pre«a Ami.—By Electrlo Telegraph.—Copyright.)

RUGBY, August 17. The British Government has placed upon the agenda for the coming meeting of the Council of the League of Nations a proposal for the appointment of a commission to inquire into the present position regarding the use of opium, and the present ineffectual efforts being made to prevent the smuggling of opium in the Far East.

The grounds for the proposal are that all the efforts that have so far been made as a result of the decisions of the International Opium Convention of 1912, and of the opium conferences of 1924 and 1925, have been largely rendered of no avail owing to the. enormous amount of smuggling. This has reached such proportions that the Governments concerned are ‘finding it difficult to implement their promises made at the first opium conference, to suppress the consumption of prepared opium within a period of fifteen years. The growth of the opium poppy in China has led to great smuggling activity, and it is the desire of the British Government that the League’s experts should make inquiry on the spot to see what further measures can be taken to control the whole trade, and thus gradually carry out the desire of the signatories of the agreement, that within a given period of years, by means of gradual suppression, the use of opium, or at all events the illegal use of opium, shall be entirel}* stopped. Smuggling is at present the principal obstacle in the way, and it is with the object of studying this and the means of stopping it, that the Commission of Inquiry is asked for.

Other Governments with territories in the Far East have replied supporting the British proposal.—British Official Wireless.