Lord Crowe in despatch No.180 of the 18th ultimo, expresses the fear that the effect of the reduction of the royalty "will be to decrease the price at which morphine can be sold, and possibly to lead to an increase sale of the drug.”
But, in the first place, as stated in Mr. Humphreys letter above quoted, the royalty of $30.00 per tael has not as a general rule been collected by the Opium Farmer, for Chemists and Druggists in the Colony have entered into private agreements with him to pay less: and in the next place, as pointed out by the Chamber of Commerce, the Opium Farmer's monopoly was never intended to cover the sale of the drug as medicine, and the royalty was imposed in order to prevent the abuse of morphine or compounds of opium as substitutes for prepared and crude opium, not in order to restrict legitimate medical use of these drugs.
This Government, however, while reducing the royalty payable to the Opium Farmer on morphine, has at the same time adopted very stringent measures to restrict the use of the drug to legitimate purposes. For example at the date when Ordinance No.10 of 1904 was passed the Registrar General reported that there were some 83 firms in the Colony dealing in opium pills and opium wine, and that of these 83 there were which dealt in these articles exclusively. But in November 1908 there remained as licensees only 28 firms which had been in business in the Colony prior to the passing of Ordinance No. 10 of 1904, while only five firms all of them European (A.S. Watson & Co., Emil Niedhardt, W. Shewan & Co., A. Rumjahn & Co., J. Watkins Ltd.) had been added to the list since the passing of the Ordinance: and no firm remained which dealt exclusively in opium pills and opium wine.
On the 18th December 1907, Mr. Tratuan, as representative of this Government and Mr. A.H. Todd, as representative...