DAV
458
{
1
might formulate a policy, the Colonial Governors concerned had been asked to appoint Committees to consider what steps could be taken to carry out Part 2 of the Convention. Two reports were to hand that from Hong Kong which was frankly negative, and that from the Straits Settlement and Federated Halay States, which was very full, and suggested certain lines of advance.
Mr. Fletcher said that the agitation against opium was mainly foreign the Chinese did not at present show any manifest desire to abolish opium smoking, bat, on the contrary, were apparently determined to smoke. Opium was not to be com- pared in its deleterious effects with alcohol or Indian hemp, the use of both of which was elsewhere in the Empire permitted. The Chinese working classes in the main knew nothing of the League of Nations policy, and his Government felt strongly that it should not be asked to take any further steps for the suppression of opium than it had already taken, as long as opium production and opium smoking were universal throughout China.
He pointed out that it was impracticable for a few British officials in Hong Kong to prohibit a national custom among the thousands of Chinese resident there. Hong Kong was an integral part of China 10,000 Chinese orc sed the frontier daily and until the supply in China was materially curtailed, nothing further could effectively be done. The Hong Kong Government felt it to be somewhat illogical on the one hand to suppress oplum smoking, which was to a certain extent semi-medicinal (especially in the cure of phthisis), and, on the other hand, to allow the eating of opium in India, a practice which, according to medical evidence, was at least as harmful as smoking.
Mr. Newton remarked that as Hong Kong is a British possession, British standards must prevail there, and not
Chinese.
Sir Malcolm Delevingne pointed out that His Majesty's
-
92
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.