CO129-396 - Public Offices - 1912 — Page 453

To

No. 283 of 1911.

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA,

FINANCE DEPARTMENT,

SEPARATE REVENUE.

OPIUM.

1R. & S.

3357

1911.

C O

449

THE MOST HONOURABLE THE MARQUIS oF CREWE, K.G.,

His Majesty's Secretary of State for India.

Calcutta, the

November 1911.

MY LORD MARQUIS,

WE have the honour to address you regarding the International Conference on opium which it is understood will meet at the Hague next month. We have not yet seen the proposed agenda of the Conference ; but we believe that the general object for which a Conference was desired by the Government of the United States of America, with whom the proposal originated, was that an international convention should be drafted to in- corporate the recommendations of the Opium Commission which met at Shanghai in February 1909. We must leave it to His Majesty's Government to decide, with due regard to the interests of India, how far it is practicable or suitable to embody the Shanghai Commission's resolutions in an internation- al agreement, and what aspects of the subject it is essential, by reason of their purely domestic character, to exclude from such an agreement. Our purpose in addressing you now is twofold; first, to set out the action which we have taken upon the recommendations of the Shanghai Commission so far as they concern India; and second, to urge the imperative necessity of dealing with an evil- the misuse of cocaine and similar drugs-which threatens rapidly to become a far greater danger to India than opium has ever been, and which we believe will not improbably replace, with far more disastrous results, the "opium habit," if the latter is suppressed, in the Far East.

THE SHANGHAI RESOLUTIONS.

2. The first of the resolutions recorded by the Shanghai Commission was a recognition of the sincerity of the Chinese Govern- ment, and of the measure of success attained by it

mean,

First Resolation

in reducing the production and consumption of opium within its territories. To this expression of opinion we refer only because of the form which our recognition of China's efforts has taken. With most of the other countries which were represented at Shanghai, their sympathy with China did not and in their circumstances could not mean, more than an attitude of mind, a benevolent impulse. With India it has meant an active help and co-operation which will involve this country in large and permanent financial loss. Long before the Shanghai Commission met, and as soon as China's reforming intentions were made clear, the British Government in 1907 agreed to diminish with effect from 1908 the exports of Indian opium, subject to certain guarantees about simultaneous and parallel action on the part of China. The Indian exports of opium were to be reduced each year by a tenth of the quantity which had previously been our average supply to China, so that, if all the conditions were fulfilled, the whole of the Indian opium trade with China was to be extinguished in ten years. was tentatively adopted for the three years 1908-1910, but has been continued

This policy

233

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