CO129-472 - Others - 1921 — Page 58

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treated. Our views upon this subject are contained in our despatch No. 28, dated the 23rd November 1911, and it may suffice in the present connection to give the following extracts from that despatch regarding the practice of opium-eating in India, as we are in full agreement with the views therein expressed.

"The prohibition of opium-eating in India we regard as impossible, and any attempt at its fraught with the most serious consequences to the people and the Government. We take our stand unhesitatingly on the conclusions of the Royal Commission (for India) which reported in 1994, viz. that the opium habit as a vice scarcely exists in India; that opium is extensively used for non-medical and quasi-medical purposes, in some cases with benefit, and for the most part without injurious consequences; that the non-medical uses are so interwoven with the medical uses, that it would not be practicable to draw a distinction between them in the distribution and sale of the drug; and that it is not necessary that the growth of the poppy and the manufacture and sale of opium in British India should be prohibited except for medical purposes. Whatever may be the case in other countries, centuries of inherited experience bave taught the people of India discretion in the use of the drug, and its misuse is a negligible feature in Indian life. Even if it were possible to suppress the cultivation of opium in India, geographical and political limitations would place it beyond our power to prevent illicit import and consumption on a serious scale. The point is one which

we do not propose to labour. But some useful light is thrown upon the use of opium by the results of the latest medical inquiry, conducted under our orders, into the drug habit in India. It will be seen from the statistics of lunatic asylums in India during 1909 that, among the cases of insanity caused by the use of intoxicants, the use of opium in all its forms is scarcely responsible for any appreciable number. While 10 per cent. of the cases are due to hemp in its various forms, 3:35 per cent. to alcohol and 1.26 per cent. to other drugs (principally cocaine), only 0:46 per cent. are due to opium. These figures are all the more remarkable when we contrast the old-established use of opium in India with the entire novelty of cocaine, coupled with the fact that the use of the latter has hardly penetrated yet beyond the limits of the large towns."

"The great majority of Indian opium-eaters are not slaves to the habit. They take small doses as required, and can and do give up the allowance when the need of it is past. Opium is in virtually universal use throughout India as the commonest and most treasured of the household remedies accessible to the people. It is taken to avert or lessen fatigue, as a specific in bowel complaints, as a prophylactic against malaria (for which its relatively high anarcotine content makes it specially valuable), to lessen the quantity of sugar in diabetes, and generally to allay pain in sufferers of all ages. The vast bulk of the Indian population, it must be remembered, are strangers to the ministrations of qualified doctors or druggists. They are dependent almost entirely on the herbal simples of the country; distance and the patient acceptance of hardships standing in the way of prompt access to skilled medical relief. In these circumstances, the use of opium in small quantities is one of the most important aids in the treatment of children's sufferings. It is also a frequent belp to the aged and infirm, and an allevia- tion in diseases and accidents which are accepted as incurable. To prevent the sale of opium except under regular medical prescription would be a mockery; to many millions it would be sheer inhumacity."

We still adhere to these views regarding the consumption of opium in *British India, and we would add that the arguments apply with even greater force to the consumption of opium in Indian States. It would be a hopeless task to attempt to persuade the Indian Rulers to prohibit the practice of opium- eating in Native States, and in practice it would also be impossible to compel them to do so. Since we do not consider it either advisable or necessary to restrict the consumption of opium in India to medical and scientific purposes, we cannot be expected to take steps to secure that other nations shall so restrict the use to which Indian opium may be put.

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4. That the "Opium Convention" held similar views is clear from the method in which they dealt with this question. They drew a clear distinction between the restrictions to be imposed upon raw opium as distinguished from prepared opium and from medicinal opium, morphine, cocaine, etc., all of which are dealt with separately in 3 separate Chapters of the Convention. While the provisions of Chapter III regarding medicinal opium, morphine, cocaine, etc., provide in Article 9 that the contracting parties "shall enact pharmacy laws and regulations to confine to medical and legitimate purposes the manufacture, sale and use of morphine, cocaine and their respective salts and "shall cooperate with one another to prevent the use of these drugs for any other purpose," no such provision is contained in Chapter I which deals with raw opium. The only provisions relating to the export and import of raw opium are Article 2 under which the contract- ing Parties are required to limit the number of towns, ports and other localities through which the importation or exportation of raw opium shall be permitted, and Article 3 under which the contracting Parties are required to take measures to prevent the exportation of raw opium to countries which shall have prohibited the entry thereof and to control the exportation of raw opium to countries which shall have limited the importation thereof, and Article 5 which provides that the contracting Powers shall not allow the export and import of raw opium except by duly authorised persons. In our despatch referred to in paragraph 2 above we shall show that before these provisions were made formally operative, they had been acceptel and adopted by the Government of India for several years past, and that we have in practice gone further than the provisions of the Hague Opium Convention require. The Hague Convention contemplated the use of opium for other than purely medical and scientific purposes; it did not stigmatise the use of opium for such purposes as an abuse and it placed the responsibility for regulating the import of the drug upon the importing country. If any Government desires to restrict its importation of opium to the requirements of legitimate medicinal or scien- tific purposes and asks us to allow to be exported to that country only the quanlity which it considers sufficient for such purposes, we shall immediately agree to its proposal. But we are unable to accept the proposal that whether the importing Nation desires or not we should in every case inquire into the ses to which opium exported will subsequently be applied, and forbid the exportation under any circumstances of raw opium unless it is certified by the importing cruntry to be required purely for medicinal or scientific purposes. The restric- tions that we have already put upou the export of opium, and more particularly the stoppage of exports to China, has been the cause of an extra burden of over £1,000,000 of taxation in India We are not prepared to accept the pro- posal which would merely result in the transfer of the present restricted trade in opium from India to other opian growing countries—a proposal moreover which runs contrary to the conclusions arrived at after full consideration by the Hague Convention, the more particularly as no arguments are adduced in the correspondence forwarded to justify such a radical alteration in the decisions of that Convention.

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5. As regards the other drags referred to in the correspondence, we are prepared to accept the arrangement with one qualification to which we shall refer below. In order to give effect to it so far as exports from India are concerned, we are prepared to issue a notification under section 19 of the Sea Customs Act, 1878, restricting the export of the drugs in question to cases where the consignment to be exported is covered by a certificate issued under the authority of the Government of the country concerned to the effect that it is required exclusively for legitimate medicinal or scientific purposes and will not be re-exported. It will be necessary that when we are notified of a country's adherence to the agreement we should at the same time be informed of the authority by which the necessary certificates will be issued.

As regards imports into India we are prepared to arrange for the issue of similar certifi cates to would-be exporters for presentation in the country from which the Importers! consignment is to be exported. It will be necessary for us to ask local Govern- ments and Administrations for assistance in this respect and we are therefore not in a position at once to indicate the authorities who will issue the certificates.

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