CO129-395 - Public Offices - 1912 — Page 339

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morphine, cocaine, &c., are manufactured on the date when the present convention shall be signed, shall have the right to denounce the said convention; and such denunciation nay take effect a month after it has been communicated to the Netherlands Government.'

It will be observed that this proposal aimed not merely at the production of opium, morphine, or cocaine for purposes condemned by the convention, but even at production for legitimate medical purposes, and would in fact have prevented any Power from starting a new internal industry for such

purposes.

The German delegates, in private conversation with us, suggested that we ought to welcome this proposal, since it would permanently establish our practical monopoly in the morphine trade like that of the Germans in cocaine. We replied, of course, that we could not assent to anything of the kind, and that our instructions were simply to obtain measures for confining the use of these drugs to proper medical proposal gave us considerable anxiety, since it seemed to us to indicate that the Germans, purposes. The in spite of the agreement we had come to with them in regard to the morphine and cocaine articles were casting about for an easy means of withdrawing from the convention. We hoped, however, that this was merely & ballon d'essui, and that the idea would not be pressed.

The proposal was subsequently withdrawn, in view of the methods finally adopted to secure the adhesion of outside Powers to the convention.

66. At the thirteenth session (21st December) the American delegation also brought forward resolutions on the subject of adhesion to and ratification of the convention, which were to the following effect -----

(1)(a) Powers not represented at the conference might be allowed to adhere to the convention; but the participating Powers might lay down conditions of adherence. In the absence of such conditions, adherence would imply acceptance of all the obligations required by the convention.

(6.) The interested Governments should agree among themselves as to the steps to be taken to obtain the adhesion of States whose co-operation might be necessary or useful in order to secure complete execution of the convention.

(2) The convention should be ratified as soon as possible, and in any case within a year. This was merely setting forth in other words a matter which had already been agreed to provisionally.

(3.) The convention should come into force in all the dominions of the contracting Powers sixty days after ratification.

These resolutions were subsequently withdrawn.

67. The powers of the Drafting Committee were, by a resolution passed during this session, extended so as to enable it not merely to put into conventional form the substance of resolutions already accepted by the conference, but to add such additional articles as seemed necessary for the purposes of completing the convention.

68. Reference had been made in more than one of the previous sessions of the conference to the difficulty in regard to dealing with "Indian hemp." The Italian Government had put this subject forward as one of the matters which the conference should consider, but its delegate, M. Santoliquido, having also to attend the International Sanitary Conference in Paris, had only been present at one of our meetings (at the fourth sessiou). The Italian Minister at The Hague had accordingly been communicated with by M. Cremer (Netherlands), as chairman of the Programme Committee; and M. Cremer now put before the conference a letter from the Minister stating that M. Santoliquido had informed him that the Italian delegation had no intention of presenting any specific proposal in regard to hemp drugs, and left it to the conference as a whole to take such measures in regard to these as it might deem expedient.

69. At the urgent request of Dr. Hamilton Wright the subject was referred to the Programme Committee, but that body was of the unanimous opinion that no useful purpose would be served by entering on the discussion of such a question, in which many interests might be involved, without careful study and consideration. M. Cremer, its chairman, therefore announced to the conference that, having regard to these eircumstances, and to the facts that--(a) the conference was not in possession of the statistics necessary for adequate treatment of the subject;* (b) it was difficult to obtain a scientific definition of the preparations that would have to be dealt with; (c) the

It may be noted in this connection that the suggestion of the Italian Government for the inclusion of hemp drugs in the conference programme, though indicated to the Government of the United States early in 1910, was not brought to the notice of His Majesty's Government, or presumably to that of the other Powers either, till about a fortnight before the conference wet.

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delegates had no instructions in regard to the discussion of this matter; (d) it appeared sufficient for the countries threatened by the abuse of hemp drugs to take internal measures against them-the Programme Committee considered it sufficient to recommend the adoption of the following resolution in the form of a vœu :--

“Il est à désirer que les Gouvernements participants étudient la question du chanvre indien au point de vue statistique et scientifique, dans le but de régler éventuellement, pur leur législation intérieure ou pour un accord international, les abus de son emploi.”

This resolution was accordingly introduced by the Netherlands delegation, and was carried, with an amendment proposed by us substituting for the word éventuellement the words si la nécessité s'en fait sentir.

70. The Chinese delegation wished the resolution to read as follows:

"Il est à désirer que les Gouvernements participants étudient la question du chanvre indien au

point de vue statistique et scientifique, dans le but d'en contrôler le commerce, et d'en régler l'usage par leur législation intérieure ou par un accord international, ou par tous les deux'

But this was objected to on the ground that it was going beyond what the data before us justified. M. Brenier (France) pointed out that the Chinese Government could, if it pleased, take restrictive measures against hemp drugs such as had been already taken in Indo-China, and Sir William Meyer added that similar restrictions had been in force in British India for a good many years. The Chinese amendment was accordingly withdrawn.

Dr. Hamilton Wright expressed the hope that the resolution as carried would become a definite article of the convention, but he met with no support in this view, and the resolution remained a vou, and stands as such in the final protocol (clause I (2)). 71. The next matter for consideration was a resolution by the American delegation which had been brought forward and received some discussion at the twelfth session. This was to the effect that the participating Powers should communicate to one another, through the medium of the Netherlands Government, texts of existing and future laws and regulations bearing on matters dealt with in the convention; as also statistical information in regard to the trade in raw and prepared opium, morphine, and cocaine, and their respective salts, hemp drugs, and any other drugs or preparations dealt with in the convention.

The mention of hemp drugs was now deleted from the resolution, and, as regards the exchange of statistical information, an amendment, moved by our delegation and accepted by the Americans, to the effect that the statistics should be based, not only ou Customis reports, but also on the registers of sale kept by persons licensed to carry on trade in the drugs concerned, was carried with a single negative vote--that of Germany. Our object, as Mr. Max Müller explained, was not in any way to divulge the statistics of individual firms, but, by grouping these together, to obtain information which would be very valuable as a supplement to the Customs returns.

Later on, however (seventeenth session), when article 21 of the convention, which was based on this resolution, came up for consideration, the German delegation pointed out that in some cases, as in regard to heroine, the trade was so largely in the hands of a single firm that to give the statistics proposed would in effect amount to divulging private affairs; and, recognising the justice of this view, the conference brought back the article to the scope of the original resolution by merely prescribing in general terms the submission of statistical information in regard to trade in the drugs mentioned.

72. At the fourteenth session (22nd December) the American delegation brought up a fresh series of resolutions, intended to stiffen the restrictive measures already agreed upon in respect of the drugs dealt with by the convention. The fourth resolution, however, which concerned the protection of aboriginal natives of Pacific Islands, was withdrawn, and the remaining three resolutions were referred to the Drafting Committee and subsequently dropped.

73. The conference then proceeded to the discussion in article form, and at this stage in a separate convention, of the special resolutions regarding China referred to in paragraphs 57-61 above, and then adjourned for a Christmas recess.

74. We had now been sitting for about three weeks, and had, as it seemed, come to a final agreement in regard to most of the matters with which we had been called upon to deal. The resolutions covering the ground which forms the basis of the

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