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Paper on the Control of Opium in British Colonies by S. B. B. McElderry representing the Governments of Ceylon, Mauritius, Malaya, British North Borneo and Hongkong at the Red Cross Conference at Bangkok, November-December, 1922.
INTRODUCTORY.
The opium poppy is cultivated and raw opium produced principally in India, Turkey, Persia and China, and to a lesser extent in Japan, Formosa, Korea, Siam, French Indo-China, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Greece and Egypt.
Apart from the use of opium for strictly medicinal purposes and as the raw material for the manufacture of morphia and its derivatives, the drug is consumed by eating or by smoking.
The practice of opium eating obtains chiefly among Indians, and of smoking among Chinese, and in so far as British Colonies, with the excep tion of Ceylon, are concerned, the problem is almost entirely confined to the smoking of opium among the Chinese populations.
CONTROL OF PRODUCTION.
For restricting the consumption of opium two main methods suggest themselves, the control of production and the control of distribution, both of which present very great difficulties.
As to the former the complete suppression of the growth of the opium poppy is not desirable in view of the legitimate medicinal uses of opium and its derivatives, as for example of morphia in the treatment of cancer.
Restriction of the production of opium to the amount required for medi- cinal purposes is impossible of immediate attainment. In the first place there is the difficulty of defining legitimate medical purposes and estimating the amount required therefor, particularly in some countries where medical science is in a backward state and where opium is much used in the practice of native medicine; and there is also the danger of a restricted cultivation putting the cost of necessary medical supplies beyond the reach of the poorer classes throughout the world.
But the main obstacle to securing effective control of production would be the difficulty of inducing the numerous countries where the poppy is grown to adopt some system of rationing of production by which the supply would be greatly reduced below its present figure. Many of these countries derive considerable revenue from opium and in several there are large poppy growing areas where the Governments concerned are incapable of exer- cising any efficient control. There is the further question of the peasants whose livelihood at present depends on this crop, and the necessity of finding other profitable crops to replace the poppy.
Thus the problem of the control of production does not admit of any easy solution, and while efforts are being made to solve it, it is necessary to fall back on other methods of dealing with the opium question.