CO129-486 - Public Offices - 1924 — Page 201

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Sir Melcolm Deloyingne replica to these objections.

The British Covernment took the view that as long as the drugs

were manufactured greatly in excess of the amounts required for

legitirate, medical and scientific purposes, it would be

impossible to prevent the traffic in them for illicit purposes.

The limitation of the manufacture of the drugs to the amounts

required for medical and scientific purposes was therefore

essential. The Opium dvisory Commitice came to the conclusion

at its meeting last year that cufficient material as to the

world' a legitimate requirements had been collected to enable

such a limitation to be effected. In the first instance,

the figure would necessarily be approximate and would have

be fixed sufficiently high to allow a margin for error.

He thought that it would be possible, as the enquiries were

continued, to obtain trustworthy figures for the legitimate

requirements of the various countries. ...s regards the

ellocation of the quotas among the different manufacturing countries, he started from the supposition that all the manu-

facturing countries would give their figures of the amounts

manufactured at present. On a rough calculation he estimated

that in the case of cocaine, the reduction, in the first

instance, on the estimates of requirements already supplied

was about 25%. Sir Malcolm Delevingzo did not think that it

would be impossible to fix a reasonable margin for not too

abnormal circumstances. As regards quite abnormal circumstances,

such as a big war, the position would be mich the same as at

present. Special steps could be taken to augment the supply.

It would be necessary to provide for a new country to begin the

manufacture of drugs because if this were not done, many countries