CO129-467 - Governor Sir Stubbs & Acting Governor Claud Severn - 1921 [1-5] — Page 327

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MINUTES.

MINUTES NOT TO

BE WRITTEN ON THIS SIDE.

CONFIDENTIAL.

26119

326

26 AY 20

sir,

60032/30

6399110

هانبان

GOVERNMENT HOUSE.

HONGKONG. 1st April, 1921.

LAT

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt

of Lord Milner's despatch No.450 dated 24th December, 1920, and to state that I concur generally in the views expressed by Mr. Severn in his despatches No.308 of 26th September, 1919, end confidential of the same date with regard to the

opium question.

2.

Some of the points now raised by the Anti-

Opium Association show them to be singularly ill-informed on matters of common knowledge. It may perhaps be well for

me to deal specifically with such of the observations quoted in the Foreign Office letter of 3rd December, 1920, as directly concern this Government:-

(2) The New Territory which is apparently what the Association meens by"Kowloon" is only "a part of China" in e geographical sense: but in any case no rew opium whatever goes there from Hongkong.

(4) The opium farm was abolished in 1914 in Hongkong,

ite place being taken by a Government monopoly.

(5) The control of morphine, etc. is probably as strict

in Hongkong as anywhere in the world.

(6) "Opium divans" were made illegal in 1909; the number of opium shops is as low as possible, and the retail trade in opium is most strictly controlled.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

WINSTON CHURCHILL, M.P.,

&c.

80..

&c..

Toral coeur handing out

(7)