DRUG ADDICTS

Evening Star, Issue 22454, 26 September 1936, Page 27

DRUG ADDICTS

KIDNAPPING IN CHINA Although the profits on each victim are small, kidnapping has become • flourishing business in North China, states the British United Press. Twenty cents (about 3dl is the average which a “ kidnap broker ” pay* for a child, although some have brought as little ms a penny. Most of the kidnappers, however, are paid with packets of heroin and receive no cash. The “ racket ” is organised by Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese hirelings, and operations -ara carried out in the Tientsin, Pekin, and East Hopei autonomous districts. The “ brokers ” give the actual kidnappers drugs and then collect what they can from the parents of the stolen child. The ransom ranges generally xrom a couple of shillings to several pounds, but now and then there is a neber haul. Police are powerless to break up the system, because the “ brokers ” claim the protection of tha Japanese flag, just as do the smuggler* who operate from Manchuria so openly. They are well armed and ready to fight any poh-.,e who get i« tlnfir waj ■ . If a Japanese kidnapping organiser gets shot, tjie Chinese are required to pay indemnity, and make formal apologies, as though he were a respectable Japanese citizen. The Japanese Concession in Tientsin continues to be the centre of the narcotics tratfic in North China. The Municipal Government recently tried to open licensed drug dispensaries for the sale of narcotics to registered addicts, but the .plan lailetl because they could not compete ni-n the prices in the Japanese Concession. A Chinese woman doctor, who was educated in the United States, recently estimated that there were 800,000 heroin addicts in Tientsin alone.