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1. Opium is commonly consumed by people of the Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian races in this Colony.
Amongst the Chinese all classes are included. With reference to Malays those we see here are mostly sea-faring men, the Indians, who consume opinm, are principally Sikh destitutes who come here with the hope of obtaining employment and a few of the Sikh and Mahomedan Indian Police, the Indians chiefly eating the drug, they do not smoke. I am also informed that some of the men of the Hongkong Regiment consume this drug. The Eurasians I refer to are of three classes, first the offspring of Europeans and Chinese, secondly the offspring of Portuguese and Chinese and thirdly the offspring of Indians and Chinese.
2. Of the Chinese at least 60 per cent. of the whole community are consumers.
Women very rarely consume opium to any extent. I have heard of a few cases in which they have been in the habit of smoking small quantities of the drug.
Children never do so.
3. When smoked in moderation I have observed no ill effects from its use; on the other hand I consider that to many it is decidedly beneficial. When taken in excess it is undoubtedly an evil, all moral sense disappears, the person addicted to the habit will commit any crime to obtain the drug, physically these victims to the habit are to be known at once by their attenuated bodies, their wizened yellow skin and their lethargic habit, socially all family ties and those of friendship are severed. Chinamen have been known to sell even their own children to obtain the drug.
The effects are much the same on consumers of every race.
4. Consumers chiefly smoke opium, a very few eat it and they are principally Sikhs (Indians). Some Chinamen also take the opium in the form of pills, these are chiefly those who are so fully employed that they have not time. to indulge in smoking the drug they are indeed too busy to go through all the tedious processes involved in smoking and to obtain the stimulant and sustaining effect of the drug they swallow or eat opium in the form of small pills.
I have never heard of a decoction being drunk.
Lately a practice has sprung up in this Colony of injecting morphine (one of the alkaloids of opium) subcutaneously. For full information with reference to this see C.S.O. No. 1454/93.
5. Not in my experience, the greater majority are moderate consumers.
6. (a) Most certainly not.
(b) I know many consumers who have taken opium for years without it having done them any
appreciable harm.
Description of cases :-Vide Appendix C.
7. Amongst the Chinese all classes are addicted to this habit, labourers, merchants, and artizans. With regard to the Malays as I have stated before, in this Colony, our experience is with the sailors only of this race.
The Indians who take the drug are a few Sikh and Mahomedan members of the Indian Section of the Hongkong Police Force, and the Sikh and Mahomedan destitutes. These all eat the opium in the form of small pills made at Chinese drug stores. The only Indians who smoke the drug are the half cast Malay Indians.
With regard to the Eurasians they are of every class and principally smoke.
8. There is no comparison, in my opinion alcohol is much the greater evil in its results on those who take it to excess.
It is quite a mistaken idea that Asiatics do not drink. I have had many cases of alcoholism pure and simple under treatment in the Government Civil Hospital during the past six years and they have proved much more unmanageable and difficult to cure than the few cases of inveterate opium eaters whom I have had to treat.
Effect of the habit when consumed in moderation is certainly not injurious and in many cases in my opinion is deciderlly beneficial. See Appendix C.
I cannot help thinking that there is in the Chinese an hereditary toleration, if not a craving, for opium. It is not necessary for Europeans to take opium to withstand the ill effects of the climate, as for one reason we are not so much exposed to the climate as the Chinese from our manner of living, occupations &c. and alcohol in moderation fulfils the same purpose.
9. (a) The habit of consuming opium to excess by healthy men is certainly looked upon by the Chinese as degrading and injurious. In moderation for those who work hard there is no harm in smoking a few pipes, the general idea and I think the true one is that it does good by removing the feeling of fatigue and affording rest and also acting as a prophylactic in some diseases e. g. malaria, and a decidedly remedial agent in other diseases.
(b) It is difficult to answer this question as Asiatics are not a race addicted to excess in alcohol. It is only in Chinamen who have been brought into contact with Europeans and have acquired some of their bad habits that the evils of alcoholism are seen.
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