香港總督府
HONG KONG DESPATCH
CONFIDENTIAL
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG
(23)
19 February 1973
INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE NARCOTICS TRADE AS THEY
AFFECT HONG KONG
(LA)
Sir,
NXX 19/3
With my letter to Sir Duncan Watson of 22 January I enclosed two long and detailed papers on the international aspects of the drug problem as it affects Hong Kong. The object of this despatch is to cover the same ground in a shorter and more general way, that might assist in the understanding of this very serious problem by a wider readership in the Diplomatic Service. The good name of the British administration is very much at stake.
2.
The cession of Hong Kong in 1841 was extracted from the Chinese primarily to promote the British opium trade with China. Throughout the remainder of the last century this trade continued to be a major factor of life in Hong Kong, whose Chinese inhabitants accepted opium smoking as a traditional social habit. Total prohibition of the opium trade and opium smoking was not effected in the Colony until 1946.
3.
Against this historical background it is ironical, if not surprising, that Hong Kong should now be confronted with one of the world's worst problems of drug addiction, illicit drug trafficking and manufacturing. Our estimate is that the Colony now has not less than 60,000 drug addicts, and probably considerably more, out of a population of four million proportionally one of the highest, if not the highest, in the world. Its geographical position astride the main communications routes in the area has made it almost inevitable that Hong Kong should also have become a centre of the illicit trade in narcotics. We estimate that some 50 tons of raw opium and 10 tons of its derivative morphine base are imported illegally into Hong Kong every year. The Colony is a major producer of heroin from imported opium, which is exported clandestinely to, amongst other places, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. The turn-over of the business of opium and its derivative in Hong Kong is estimated to amount to about HK$1 million a day.
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME, KT, MP
CONFIDENTIAL
/over