CULTIVATION AND EXPORT OF PERSIAN OPIUM.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 528, 26 February 1876, Page 3

CULTIVATION AND EXPORT OF PERSIAN OPIUM.

The Gazette of India contains a report by Mr Lucas of the Persian Gulf Residency, giving a history of the cultivation and export of Persian opium, which some Indian alarmists had supposed likely to increase so M to seriously threaten the revenue derived from the production in Bengal. It is explained that a few years ago Persian merchants and cultivators entertained the belief that their cultivation of the drug could be indefinitely extended, but this has quite passed away, and the trade rather declines. The largest produce for any one year was 2600 cases, and this has fallen latterly, so that it is now hardly over 2000, a quantity inappreciably small in regard to the demands in China, to which country most of it goes. To avoid the Indian duties, it is carried regularly by English steamers to Suez, and there transhipped for China ; but its market in that country is not a certain one, there having been complaints of adulteration, and there being no Government guarantee such as that on the large shipments from Calcutta. Persian opium contains a large proportion of inprphia, and hence a certain part of the supply comes tq London and finds a ready sale here for medical use. There is some consumption of stick opium in Persia itself, but this is very limited, and none is ever imported. Since the facilities for shipping opium from the Gulf arose, the trade in it overland to Constantinople which formerly existed has bepome quite extinct.