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Secretariat for Home Affairs,
Hong Kong.
December, 1972.
THE PROBLEM OF NARCOTIC DRUGS IN HONG KONG
PAPER ONE
BACKGROUND INFORMATION'
Introduction
1.
Hong Kong was founded in January 1841 primarily in order to facilitate the British trade in opium with China. Although China made opium trading illegal in 1799, nevertheless from 1800 onwards the import of the drug increased substantially, particu- larly after 1834 when the East India Company lost its monopoly of trade with China and the door was opened to foreign traders. Prior to the turn of the eighteenth century the balance of trade had been in China's favour and silver flowed in, but the lucrative opium business progressively reversed this trend during the first 30 odd years of the nineteenth century, a process which accelerated after 1834 resulting in a most serious drain on China's silver reserves. So alarmed was the Chinese Government at this turn of events that it appointed a Special Commissioner at Canton in 1839 with orders to stamp out the opium trade. He took immediate and vigorous action by surrounding the foreign factories with troops, stopping food supplies and refusing to allow anyone to leave until all the stocks of opium had been surrendered and dealers and ship's captains had signed a bond not to import opium on pain of execution. After a seige of six weeks the British Superintendent of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot, R.N., authorised the surrender of 20,283 chests of opium and thus the foreign community at Canton ransomed their lives. But this did not please the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, who decided that the time had come for a proper settlement of Sino-British commercial relations. He demanded either a commercial treaty which would put trade relations on a satisfactory footing, or the cession of a small island where the British could live under their own flag free from threats. An expeditionary force arrived in June 1840 to back these demands and so began the so called First Opium War, 1840-42, which led to the cession of Hong Kong Island in January 1841, an arrangement confirmed by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The Second Anglo- Chinese War of 1856-58, often called the Second Opium War, which arose out of disputes over the implementation of earlier treaties and the boarding by the Chinese of the British vessel the Arrow, led to the cession of the Kowloon peninsula to the British by the 1860 Convention of Peking.
2.
The foregoing sketch conveys the prominent and important part opium played in the founding of the Colony of Hong Kong. Throughout the last century the opium trade was a major feature of Hong Kong life with opium smoking amongst the Chinese accepted as a traditional social habit. The twentieth century saw attempts
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