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returned to illicit business and the local interests
concerned to oppose any reduction of opium consumption
became progressively more formidable.
Before my
recent action the smugglers' profits on Hong Kong
opium comsumption were estimated to be at least
$1,500,00 annually. In addition there still exists
an enormous wholesale opium smuggling business from
South China, for which Hong Kong is the natural
port of shipment, and which thus brings this Colony
into disrepute. The revenue aspect of this question
is also serious. You will find a statement of the
revenue derived by Hong Kong from opium for the last
thirty years in table IV of Sessional Faper No.4 of
1927, copies of which were forwarded to you in
my despatch No.374 of 1st September, 1927. As I
stated in Legislative Council of the 1st September,
1927, "this Government is very willing to prohibit
the consumption of opium in the Colony and to
forego its revenue from this source as soon as the
production and consumption of opium in China are
suppressed". but, when we know that for each dollar
we receive the less a dollar or more has gone to
swell the funds of smugglers, to facilitate
increased opium consumption and to postpone the
1
date of final suppression, then we regard the subject
in a different light. e are ready to make serious
sacrifices for a common cause; but we claim that
some limit should be set to the concessions which
wevare asked to make for the sake of what the
Colonial Office itself has very correctly called
"eye-wash".
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