146
the latter just
من
Ad
unfavourably their own opium habits. (10) Opium consumers do break themselves of the habit. If the supply of Indian opium were cut off it would have no effect whatever on the importation of all other kinds was prohibited because smokers would supply themselves from China or elsewhere. There is no reason to suppose they would take to alcohol or some other narcotic than opium. Opium smokers are as much addicted to drinking alcohol as non-smokers. They are not likely to abstain altogether; (12). $357600. If this were extinguished the colony would have to find some other means of raising the needful revenue. People would regret the loss of the opium revenue as they had to make up the deficit by extra taxation (13). Only very few people of European race contract the opium habit, probably because they look on it as a degrading & dangerous habit. Chinese are more liable to contract the habit, because the temptation to take a social pipe is constantly held out to them, and they are so familiar with the habit that they regard it with less abhorrence than Europeans do. Indians who eat opium do so because they are under an impression that it enables them to endure fatigue better. (14); Opium consumers usually use it socially, taking a pipe with friends or with opium smokers with whom they desire to do business. The women smokers are chiefly those who are or have been prostitutes, or the concubines of well-to-do Chinese smokers, and they acquire the habit through constantly having to roast the opium for men to smoke. They do not usually take it in the first instance for physical pain or for its medicinal properties.
The Chinese do not appear to attach much value to it in the cases mentioned; they sometimes use small opium plasters on temples for headache. 15. They do. 16.