CO129-482 - Public Offices - 1923 — Page 515

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It indeed boonmo apparent that with the

nyilable morns the forbidden areas could not be sufficiently maintained everywhere, and there was justification for the fear. that, if no other means "ere sought, the Government would fail to do what was expected of it, and would not succeed in causing

many, the use of opium to diminish to the extent desired by while the prohibition laws would in the long run be broken too frequently. One thing and another would bring about more ond more dissatisfaction with an otherwise excellent system of por- sonol licences.

The introduction of it in the near futuro in larger contr.s of population such as Palembang and Cheribon 7's considered undesirablo, In theso pocs the number of buyurs was considered too large, and the trafic too consider blo, to permit of prepor supervision of where the opium bought goes to. The requin.monta vere therefore first restricted to a proper identification of all buyers, later on to strive for a reduction of the amount bought, firstly by generally reducing the quantity of opium, "hich at the very outside one person might possess, and thereafter probably by fixing for every buyer soparately, how much he was allowed to buy, the result therefore being a system Thereby only those porsons were allowed to buy, who had a personal permit to do so. The great difference between this and tho licenco, systoms thon in oxistonco, was therefore, that although the buying of opium was only permitted to posacssors of on identifiantion orrd, the possession of opium (provided it was not in excess of the goncral maximum) wng not forbidden to others, For, ns has nlrundy been said, it was foarod, that n prohibition againt tho possession of opium, wouldbe difficult to onforco, and that it would exposo the population to numerous sc^rohos in the housos and would very easily lead to illegal prootiocs.

One therefore wished to begin with a proper identification of all buyers, so that these would all become known at the opium-retail-shops. The buyers were formerly already

that thoy woro registered, but it was far from being tho anao thoroby all known. Firstly, for protionl runsons, portion of tho buyers

nt the largest opium-rotril-shops never onme on tho

ns extended rogistors, But oven though the registration include all the buyers, ns was the case in Palombang and Choribon for instance, its utility in those large placos was nevertheless gomparatively small, amongst other ronsons booruse it was only too onay for the buyers to give up fictitious nomos and wrong ndrosacs, This thon was often dono.

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