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By Act No: 17 of 1911 the law as to opium and drugs (by which is meant cocaine, morphine, eucaine, and their salts and compounds and opium) is made more stringent.
The importation, manufacture, sale, possession, or offering for sale, or traffic in Canada in drugs, except for scientific or medicinal purposes, is a criminal offence. The smoking of opium, the possession of opium prepared or in preparation for smoking, and frequenting of opium dens are criminal offences.
And the exportation, without lawful excuse, of any drug, as defined above, to any country which prohibits the entry of such drug is punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both.
In the Transvaal the importation of opium was prohibited by law in 1909, except under permits issued only to chemists and druggists.
IL-Far Eastern Territories.
The legislation as to opium and as to morphia and other drugs in these colonies and protected States, although connected, are best considered separately.
(a.) Opium.
The regulation of the opium traffic, by which is meant trade in opium, whether prepared for consumption or not, depends on the possibility of the adoption of stringent measures of repression. In Wei-hai Wei and Ceylon; where the number of opium consumers is small and the population more or less stable, it has been found possible to institute a system of registration which will gradually abolish opium consumption, whereas in Hong Kong and the Malay Peninsula, where the Chinese population fluctuates and fresh immigrants are constantly arriving, registration is considered to be impracticable.
The steps taken in Wei-hai Wei and Ceylon to abolish the use of opium may be stated as follows:-
In 1909 the commissioner of Wei-hai Wei, under the instructions of His Majesty's Government, promulgated an ordinance regulating the traffic. By its provisions no person may import, possess, sell, or buy any opium, whether prepared or raw, unless he is either a qualified medical man or chemist (in which case he is permitted to deal in opium for bona fide medicinal purposes), or a person who is licensed by a Government medical officer to smoke or otherwise use opium, on the ground that deprivation of the drug would injure his health. Such licensed consumers are registered, and as they die out the use of opium will gradually be abolished. The law further provided that no person might be licensed who was either not of full age or a woman, though the latter could obtain a licence by special sanction of the commissioner.
An additional safeguard against the consumption of opium by persons hitherto unused to it was provided in the clause of the ordinance which prohibits the existence of opium divans.
No opiuin, whether raw or prepared, may be exported from Wei-hai Wei except under licence from the commissioner. It will be seen that a complete system of control, leading to the abolition of the consumption of opium in the territory, has been established, and that measures have been taken to prevent the drug being exported from Wei-hai Wei.
The situation in Ceylon was slightly different. Besides those persons who were habitual consumers of opium, the cederalas (or native doctors who were trained in the traditional Ceylonese system of medicine) habitually used opium in their prescriptions. Some difficulty was encountered in the settlement of the question of what persons, professing to be vederalas, had any claim to knowledge of the ancient tradition. The matter was, however, decided by careful enquiry, and those persons who were found to be qualified rederalas were registered, and are entitled to use opium in treating their patients.
An ordinance, which came into force on the 1st October, 1910, regulates the traffic. The right of importing opium, whether raw or prepared, is vested solely in the Government, and is delegated to the principal civil medical officer, who has charge of the distribution of the drug. Opium for purely medicinal purposes may be supplied by the principal civil medical officer to qualified medical men and veterinary surgeons, and to registered vederalas. It can only be supplied to other persons on, registration as habitual consumers. No
person could be registered except on production of satisfactory evidence that at the time when the law was passed he was an habitual consumer, together
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with evidence of the amount which he was accustomed to consume and the manner and form of consumption. Thus the opium consumers in Ceylon are a definite number, to which additions cannot be made. The use of the drug, except for medicinal purposes, must therefore disappear in course of time. Further precautions against undue use of opium are taken by limiting the annual amount allowed to a registered consumer or vederala to 8 oz.
The importation, possession, or sale of opium, except by the authorised officer (the principal civil medical officer, and for the purposes described above, is illegal. It has therefore not been found necessary to impose any restriction on the exportation of opium, since the amount imported depends on the purely local consumption, the maximum amount of which can be ascertained.
The conditions in the Malay Peninsula and in Hong Kong appear to preclude for the present any system of registration of opium consumers, the object of which is to compile a list to which no addition can be made: the constant changes in the population of Hong Kong and the regular immigration of Chinese into the Malay Peninsula prevent the introduction of such a system, since, under present conditions, a large proportion of new-comers are consumers of opium.
Both in Hong Kong and in the Malay Peninsula the policy of the Government has been, and continues to be, the restriction of the traffic, so far as is possible, consistently with the prevention of the substitution of morphia injection and other forms of drug taking. The habit is already deplorably prevalent, and smuggling is hard to check, since the packages containing the drugs are capable of easy concealment.
Until the beginning of 1910, the importation, preparation, and sale of opium was farmed by the Government of the Straits Settlements to a syndicate, whose interest lay in encouraging the use of the drug as far as possible. By Ordinance No. 21 of 1909 the Government took to itself the monopoly of the right to import, export, prepare, sell, and retail opium. Chandu, ie., opium prepared for consumption, can only be retailed by duly licensed persons and at a fixed price, and licences are required for the maintenance of smoking divans. Only adult males can buy chandu. Further restric- tions on the sale were imposed by a heavy increase in the price, which in 1910 was raised by 50 per cent., and by the rigid suppression of opium-smoking in brothels, which had been a lucrative though illegal addition to the farmers' profits.
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In the settlement of Labuan, which is at present still subject to the system, the Government will introduce the monopoly system at the end of 1912, when the farm expires. Arrangements have also been made to supply the State of North Borneo with chandu in bulk from the 1st January, 1913, when the present farm will be terminated.
The Federated Malay States in 1909 were divided into coastal and non-coastal areas. In the former, the same system which existed in the Straits Settlements was established. In the latter, which were largely in the hands of farmers, only raw opium might be imported, and the manufacture and sale of chandu were in the hands of the farmer or of licensed persons. Since the 1st January, 1911, however, the system in force in the Straits Settlements has been extended not only over the whole of the Federated Malay States, but over all the other protected States in the peninsula with the exception of Kelantan and Trengganu, where it has not yet been found possible to cancel the existing farms. The Government of the Straits Settlements imports, prepares, and supplies all the chandu needed by the States.
In the Straits Settlements the Governor in Council has power to prohibit the exportation of raw opium or of chandu, or to impose limitations and conditions on exportation. At present opium may not be exported to Trengganu and Siam except when the requisition for the export is countersigned by the British agent at Trengganu or the Siamese consul-general at Singapore, as the case may be.
No restrictions on exportation from the Federated Malay States are provided by law, since they receive their supplies from the Straits Settlements, and the colony only imports sufficient raw opium for its own needs and those of the States which it supplies.
The Government of Hong Kong has not found it practicable to take the monopoly of the importation, preparation, and sale of opium into its own hands, but since the meeting of the Shanghai Commission, restrictions on the traffic have been made by the limitation of the farmer to a certain number of chests per annum (900 in 1911) by the suppression of opium divans, and by forbidding the sale of prepared opium to any person other than an adult male.
The preparation and sale of opium is vested in the farmer, and raw opium cau only be imported by him or by a person possessing a permit signed by a Govern-
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