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Opium-smoking in Penang.
Nov.
culated that 10 per cent. of the Chinese, 24 of the Malays, and about 1 per cent. of other natives, are addicted to the vice of opium-smok- ing. The poorer classes smoke in the shops erected for that purpose, but the wealthier orders smoke privately in their own houses. The practice is almost entirely confined to the male sex, only a few aban- doned prostitutes of the other sex partaking of the vice. A beginner will not be able to smoke more than five or six grains of chandoo, while old smokers will consume 290 grains daily.
One of the principal causes which lead to this dreadful habit among the Chinese is their remarkably social and luxurious disposition. In China, every person in easy circumstances has a saloon in his house, elegantly fitted up, to receive his friends, with pipes, chandoo, &c. All are invited to smoke, and many are thus induced to commence the practice from curiosity or politeness, though few of them are ever able to discontinue the vice afterwards.
Parents are in the habit of granting this indulgence to their chil- dren, apparently to prevent them from running into other vices still more detestable, and to which the Chinese are more prone than, perhaps, any people on earth. There is another cause which leads great numbers of young men into the practice of opium-smoking, a belief, founded, it is said, on experience, that the said practice heightens and prolongs venereal pleasure. It is, however, admitted by all, that opium-smokers become impotent at a much earlier peri- od of life than others. In painful or incurable diseases, in all kinds of mental or corporeal sufferings, in mercantile misfortune, and in other reverses of fortune, the opium-shop is resorted to as an asylum, where, for a time at least, the unfortunate may drown the recollec- tion of his cares and troubles in an indescribably pleasurable feeling of indifference to all around. The Malays are confident that opium- smoking inspires them with preternatural courage and bodily strength; it is, therefore, resorted to whenever any desperate act is in contemplation.
The smoking-shops are the most miserable and wretched places imaginable they are kept open from six in the morning till ten o'clock at night, each being furnished with from four to eight bed- steads, constructed of bamboo-spars, and covered with dirty mats and rattans. At the head of each there is placed a narrow wooden stool, which serves as a pillow or bolster; and in the centre of each shop there is a small lamp, which, while serving to light the pipes, diffuses a cheerless light through this gloomy abode of vice and mi- On an old table are placed a few cups and a tea-kettle,
sery.