(12) What proportion of your Colony's revenue accrues from opium? If the opium revenue were extinguished, could your Colony raise the needful revenue otherwise? What would the people say to the loss of the opium revenue and the obligation to make up the deficit?
If the opium revenue were extinguished, they would generally abstain altogether from alcohol or narcotics instead.
12. Milk
(13) Do people of European race contract the opium habit in any numbers? If not, why not? And what makes Asiatics more liable to contract the habit?
(14) How are opium consumers led to use the drug? Do they usually or often take it in the first instance to allay physical pain? Is opium, within your knowledge, a prophylactic against fever, or rheumatism, or malaria? Or is it so regarded commonly by any Asiatic race with which you are conversant?
(15) Do opium consumers themselves usually desire to get free of the opium habit?
(16) Is there among any Asiatic race in your Colony a feeling of hostility against England for allowing opium to be exported from India? If so, how does that feeling display itself?
(17) Have you any other remark to make in regard to opium consumption among the people around you?
N.B.-It is desired that gentlemen who kindly undertake to deal with these questions should answer as many as they can.
October, 1893.
By Order of
THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON OPIUM.
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13. Very few Europeans contract the opium habit. I think it is because they are ignorant of the harm it will eventually cause them.
14. They are first led to the habit by simply having an amusement to while away their time amongst friends at night. They are not taken to allay physical pain. In my opinion, opium is regarded by Asiatics as a prophylactic against fever.
15. Most decidedly.
16. Yes. If England does not allow the importation of opium into this Colony, a great majority of the inhabitants will not fall into the habit of smoking it.
17. The only remark I wish to make is that, if opium be strictly prohibited...
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