C 23214
Rece Reg 28 JUL 10
UNITED STATES PROPOSAL FOR AN OPIUM CONFERENCE AT
THE HAGUE.
Minutes of Proceedings of an Inter-Departmental Committee held at the Foreign Office
on July 12 to consider the Reply to be made by His Majesty's Government.
Sir J. D. La Touche, K.C.S.I.
Present:
Sir T. Holderness, K.C.S.I.representing the India Office.
Mr. H. B. Cox, C.B.
Mr. A. E. Collins
representing the Colonial Office.
Mr. H. Fountain, representing the Board of Trade.
Sir F. Campbell, K.C.M.G., C.B. representing the Foreign Office.
M. Alston
Sir F. Campbell in the Chair.
THE Committee have considered the proposals of the United States Government for an International Opium Conference at The Hague, and the Government of India's criticism upon them conveyed in their letter of the 26th May, 1930. The Committee are of opinion that these criticisms are well founded. They agree with the Government of India that a Conference, for the purpose of conventionalising the recommendations of the Shanghai Commission, will, if it keeps within its proper limits, find little practical scope for its activities, and that a proposal to convene one at once for this purpose is premature. They agree that the enlarged programme suggested by the United States Government goes beyond, and is inconsistent with, the recommendations of the Shanghai Commission, and that it suggests the discussion of subjects to which strong exception must be taken. The Committee would therefore prefer that His Majesty's Government should decline, on these grounds, to take part in the proposed Conference. But they recognise that a point-blank refusal would, for "political reasons, be difficult. They accordingly suggest the conditions and reservations which in their opinion might be made by His Majesty's Government in agreeing to participate in a Conference.
2. They suggest that the reply to the United States Government might be to the effect that, subject to certain conditions and reservations, His Majesty's Government will be prepared to take part in a Conference for the purpose of conventionalising the Resolutions of the Shanghai Commission, although in view of the contents of these Resolutions there is some doubt whether there is much scope for international action, and whether the ground for fruitful discussion has as yet been cleared by the completion in each country of the detailed enquiries and measures of reform which the Commission recommended. In particular His Majesty's Government desire to be assured that if they participate in a Conference, the other participating Powers are willing that the Conference should thoroughly and completely deal with the question of restricting the manufacture, sale, and distribution of morphia, which forms the subject of the fifth Resolution of the Shanghai Commission; and also with the allied question of cocaine. In India, in China, and in other Eastern countries the importation of morphia and cocaine from occidental countries, and the spread of morphia and cocaine habit, is becoming an evil more serious and more deadly than opium smoking, and this evil is certain to increase as the restrictions which are now placed in India and in China on the production and use of opium become more stringent. Indian and Chinese experience shows that the morphia and the cocaine evil cannot be efficiently controlled except at the source-in the stages of
[658]
435
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.