PTY.
Home Office,
End February, 1924.
513
My dear Wellesley,
First, please accept my heartiest congratulations on the announcement in Thursday's 'Tires',
I received your private note of the 30th January (F.50/41/87) enclosing Sir Paroy Loraine's despatch No.576 of 8th December, his telegram of the 7th January, and the observations of the American Finan oil Commissioner on the proposed King's Regulations for the control of. the opium traffic from the Persian Gulf. I see that the American Commissioner, Dr. Hillspaugh, considers that the application of the Iroposed Regulations to the shipment of Fersian Opium on British ships would have the effect of prohibiting such shipments, and his observations are based on that assumption. He does not explain why he thinks so, but if it really is the case that the Regulations would have that effect, it can only be because the whole, or at any rate the bulk, of the traffic. in Persian opium is illegitimate, and carried on by underhand methods. There is not much doubt that this is indeed the character of the greater part of the trade, but I should hardly have expected the American Financial Commissioner to have admitted it or to have based his
objections to the Regulations on the fact.
I see no reason myself to surpose that the proposed Regulations would have the effect of killing the Persian export trade. At present the bulk of the Persian opium goes to the Far East for smoking purposes, and very little, if any, is used in the manufacture of morphine, the
morphine manufacturers being unable to pay the price which Feraian opium
fetches on account of the keen Far Eastern demand.
illicit traffic with the Far East was stopped, the present artificial price could no longer be maintained, There would then be an ample market for Persian opium for medicinal purposes if the price came down approximately to that of Turkish opim, as the higher morphine and
codeine
If,
however, the