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situation. The Financial Commissioner has accordingly decided recently to change the policy in this respect with the object of ensuring that there shall in each district be a sufficient supply of opium so that the needs of the people may be satisfied without their having recourse to smuggling ".
9. The Advisory Committee, in its fourth resolution, recommends "that the possibilities of the system of registration and licensing, which has already been introduced in some of the Far Eastern territories, should be thoroughly explored.'
In a Chinese community of the size of that in Hongkong it would not be possible to keep a check upon licences, if they were issued in any considerable number. Licences would be bought and sold, impersonation would be rife and licensees would corner stocks and profiteer. It has been suggested that licences should be confined to persons permanently resident in the Colony. Some ten to twelve thousand Chinese pass daily between Hongkong and China: a large part of the population, having permanent homes in China, is in the Colony for a longer or shorter period according to the prospects of remunerative work and there are periodical in-rushes of refugees who escape from dis- order in China and dribble back at varying intervals as quiet is restored to their individual village or district. This large unstable population would bring in the opium to which it is accustomed in China, and its more wealthy members would purchase the much superior Hongkong brand from the licensed permanent residents; which permanent residents would probably be men of the coolie class put forward as figure heads by profiteering syndicates.
It has been put before the Committee that smokers are already registered and licensed in the Netherlands East Indies. The Netherlands East Indies are at a consider- able distance from China, reached only after a long sea voyage. The Chinese are there an alien and not an indigenous race, and they form a very small fraction of the total population. Hongkong is geographically and racially an integral part of China, and, with the exception of a mere handful, the whole of its population is Chinese. The task proposed to Hongkong may be compared to the task of preventing the use in Manchester of an article which is in common use throughout the rest of England. The task before the Netherlands East Indies may be compared to the task of, for example, the Argentine Authorities in preventing the use by Englishmen within their territory of an article to which these Englishmen are habitually accustomed in England.
The argument formerly advanced in support of registration and licensing was based upon the desirability of gradually weaning from the habit smokers who have long been accustomed to the drug. There would be no necessity to license in Hongkong on this score, as, if Government opium was not available, smokers would use illicit opium.
10. The Advisory Committee proposes, in its fifth resolution, that the retail price of prepared opium and the penalties for the infraction of the law in regard to its import, export, sale, and use, should be made uniform in the various territories concerned.
It would hardly serve any useful purpose to discuss this question while present conditions obtain in China. As far as Hongkong is concerned, it would be unwise to reduce the present retail price of opium or to relax the existing penalties for infringe- ment of the law. It is most improbable that certain territories could be persuaded to adopt a standard of severity equal to that established in Hongkong. In a recent case in Shanghai the Press commented on a sentence of four months imprisonment and a fine of $500 in respect of a seizure of 645 pounds of opium, as being one of the severest sentences ou record in Shanghai. In a similar case in Hongkong the Magistrate would probably impose a sentence of twelve months' hard labour without the option of a fine and the offender would probably be banished on coming out of gaol. The severest sentence on record in Hongkong is a fine of $50,000, and a fine of $10,000 is not unusual.
11. It has been suggested that the official figures of opium consumption in the Colony bear no relation to the actual rate of consumption, and that, in view of recent revelations as to smuggling, there is no really effective control of the consumption of opium in the Colony.
The official figures show that during the years 1919-1922 the consumption per head of the population averaged tael .53. Figures in this connection are of doubtful value, but, as this particular figure has been queried, it will be as well to examine the point in
detail.
The consumption of tacl .53 refers to Government opium. In paragraph 5 of this report it is suggested that the consumption of illicit opium equals the consumption of Government opium, and on this basis the total consumption is taels 1.06 per head.