I shall most usefully assist Your Lordship in the matter in hand if I waive my own personal opinion points, and assume it for the sake of argument to be settled, whether rightly or wrongly, that the use of opium by the Chinese in Hongkong is an enormous evil, and that it should be the aim of the Government to discourage such use and to confine the local consumption of the drug to the smallest practicable proportions.
Proceeding therefore on the basis of this assumption, I would observe that in determining the proper method of dealing with the subject it is essential to bear in mind the three following considerations - (1) that it is desirable to restrict as far as may be practicable the local consumption of opium
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