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182
30th November, 1922.
Dear Grindle,
Your letter of the 25th. The position is certainly difficult, but there is no doubt as to what was meant by the British Delegation at Geneva. Mr. Fisher, to whom your telegram of the 9th September
was submitted, said decisively that they could not ask for an allowance to be made for consumption in previous years of smuggled opium. The words "on the closest estimate which could be made"
would not, of course, have been used if it had been known that the
actual consumption of Government chandu is recorded.
(By the way,
I suppose what is recorded is the amount of chandu sold, but is not
a proportion of that smuggled out of the Colony into China and elsewhere?)
Of course, the pledge given by the Government at Geneva
only holds in the event of the Advisory Committee making a recommendation to the same effect, but as the period during which
the limitation was to apply was to start from September of 1922, it
will apparently be necessary for the Hong Kong Government so to
arrange matters now as to be able to carry out the pledge, if it
actually becomes operative. Is it not possible for the Hong Kong
Government to limit itself to the 20 chests a month, which was the
amount they originally asked for?
I agree with your sugestion that a full statement of the position at Hong Kong should be laid before the Advisory Committee
at/
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