02489).
Extract from "Peking Daily News", March 3rd., 1919.
C
ATTI-MORPHIA MEASURES,
March 2nd,
320
The harm done by morphia is greater than opium.
For its prohibition orders have long been in force and for
the punishment of its offenders special enactments have
been promulgated.
The drastic measures lately taken by the Government
in the prohibition of opium have led the ignorant
people to substitute the use of morphia for opium. Under
such circumstances the victims seem rather to enjoy it
without realising its poisonous effect and the harm has
thus spread far and wide. When indulgence to the poison
becomes an established habit,it injures the health
of the people.
Bad characters have engaged themselves in this
illegal trade by either selling the poison or adulterating
it with other kinds of medicine and thus offer it for sale.
When the Government relaxes its vigilance in the prohibition
of the poison for one instant, the evil spreads. It is
therefore necessary to take strictest possible measures to
prohibit it so that the morphia polson may be stamped out
at the same time with the opium evil.
The chief military and civil officials of the
provinces are hereby ordered to instruct their subordinates
to institute close investigations into the illegal sale and transportation of morphia. Severe measures should be meted out to parties engaged in the trade, when the case falls under their observation and no leniency shown be show them. Vigilance should also be exercised in the investigation
into/