made about the increase in the number of secret
579
100,000 yen (£10,000) and 200,000 yen (£20,000) by
smokers of opium and the police throughout the island
fines alone apart from the 50 sen (6d) for each li-
cense granted. The Chinese were previously informed
warned all the chiefs of the villages and city wards
that all natives who smoked opium and had no licenses
would obtain them on a proper application being made.
This being generally made known the unsuspecting Chin-
ese lost no time in making application, and as it is
a Chinese custom to smoke opium when dining with
friends, many came who were not confirmed smokers.
The applicants were then (men and women alike)
taken up by the police and fines ranging from Yen 2
to Yen 20 were inflicted while those who were unable
to pay were beaten on the feet at the rate of five
strokes per yen unpaid. It appears that about seven-
teen thousand four hundred applied of whom fifteen
thousand eight hundred and seventy were granted li-
censes and placed on the smoking register after being
punished, mostly by fines. The remainder were youths
under twenty who were made to forswear smoking or were
put under medical treatment.
The Government are said to have netted between
that this was the last chance that confirmed smokers
would have of obtaining permission to smoke and they
all seem to have fallen into the trap and paid the
penalty accordingly.
The whole Proceeding would, Mr. Chalmers in-
forms me, have been strictly in accordance with law
except for a very important fact, namely that the
opium smokers law provides a scale of punishment for
those who infringe the law, but the penalty is cor-
poral punishment or imprisonment and no fine at-
taches to smoking without a license.
It is said that 90% of the secret smokers begin
the habit because they believe in it as medical treat-
ment. This is of course what most of them allege
and in the main it is probably true.
According to statistics there has undoubtedly
been a reduction in the number of smokers, but the
secret smokers still remain an unknown quantity and
100,000
as