SOCIAL WELFARE
207
force of municipal law to the conventions and agreements adopted by international bodies to control the traffic in narcotics and also empowers the Government to deal with the particular problems that arise in Hong Kong. Since the war, efforts on the part of Government to suppress this vice have resulted in traffickers and addicts turning to an increasing extent from opium to heroin, a drug which is much easier to smuggle, conceal and consume, and which is far more damaging in its effects.
The increasing gravity of this problem caused great concern and in 1957 Government appointed a committee to consider concerted action. In the light of this Committee's recommendations, Govern- ment accepted the need for most vigorous measures, which will take the form of a simultaneous drive against the sources of supply, against traffickers and against addicts. At the same time a campaign was started to enlist the support and co-operation of the public. The Preventive Service and the Police Force have been steadily expanded, and close liaison has been established between the Police and overseas authorities concerned with the suppression of the drug traffic. During the year, a Hong Kong delegation, comprising the Director of Criminal Investigation, an Assistant Director of Commerce and Industry and the Government Chemist, attended the Interpol Seminar on Narcotics in Paris sponsored by the United Nations, and members of the Hong Kong Police Force visited Japan and Bangkok for discussions. Visits were also made to Hong Kong by a member of the Welfare Ministry and officers of the National Police Agency of Japan. Mr. T. C. Green, Assistant Secretary in the Home Office and concurrently United Kingdom representative on the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs paid a three-week fact-finding visit in October and was consulted on many aspects of the local problem.
In Hong Kong, many addicts employ barbiturates as a base powder during the smoking of heroin. Legislation was therefore enacted in August 1958 to include barbitone, phenobarbitone, and their salts and preparations in the First Schedule of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, thereby placing them under stringent import and export controls in the same way as opium, morphine and heroin. Acetic anhydride, a chemical whose importation was formerly controlled on strategic grounds and which is used in the illicit