47
action, the demand will soon be limited only to
those wealthy addicts who are determined to enjoy
the luxury of smoking Indian opium, no matter
how expensive.
19. In the same tolegram you say that I have
enbarked on "a radical change from the existing
practice" The suggestion underlying your
statement is that the problem with which I am
confronted is a static one and that the price
fixed for Indian opium in Hong Kong in 1918 is the
proper price to charge today. Had conditions not
altered since 1918, I should readily agree. Eut
no comparison can reasonably be made between the
year 1918, when China was reported practically
free of the poppy, and the present year, when the
cultivation of the poppy in China is more abundant
than ever and the heyday of pirates, brigands
and saugglers of all kinds has come. I could
with greater justification claim that it was
precisely owing to the radical change of
circumstances, which has unhappily occurred, that
I sought to save the Hong Kong system of opium
control from complete collapse.
20.
The Colonial Office itself put this
point forcibly and well in its memorandum of November, 1926, prepared for the interdepartmental
Committee held at the Foreign Office to consider
the recent increase in consumption of prepared opium
in Malaya. It is very correctly stated therein
19
(see paragraphs
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