THE WAR ON OPIUM

Hokitika Guardian, 3 September 1930, Page 8

THE WAR ON OPIUM

After disheartening delays and much stubborn obstruction on the part of interested countries, the in-

ternational war against opium seems to be taking on new energy and promise. The chief, obstacle to progress at Geneva hats been the reluctance of certain manufacturing countries to surrender profits and revenues connected with the traffiic in opium and its ? , derivatives. Laist month the League Council voted to give representation on the. advisory committee to non-manufacturing and “victim” nations, including Austria, Belgium, Egypt, Mexico, Poland, Spain and-? Uruguay, all. of which have been active in the fight, to wipe l out the illicit drug traffic. . The council also decided to call, a mixed, manufacturers and non-manufacturers’ conference on limitation for December 1 next, if preparatory work for it can l>e finished before that date. It was also announced' by the delegate from Great Britain that his Government would be ..willing to take the initiative ‘in calling a, preliminary conference of representatives of the manufacturing countries only toward the end of Julv next.

What the “victim” countries object to most is the excess manufacture of opium drugs which are smuggled across their boundaries and sold for other than medicinal or scientific purposes. Italy, the only non-manu-facturing country formerly represented on the advisory, committee , (admitted to it in 1927 after a vigorous protect, tjigainst the. committee’s policy), has voiced in it the increasing demand for limitation on manufacture which the council lias at last heeded. There exists a plan for the limitation of excess opium derivatives manufactured, forwarded by the American "State Department to the Secretariat of the League of Nations through' the .-Netherlands Government. The plan is ,liaised upon a general acceptance by ‘the manufacturing countries of a scheme of stipulated .supply. A permanent central agency is to be created, to which the manufacturers are to send, in advance and for a determined period, their legitimate requirements, for domestic, use only, of each individual substance delved from opium and coca leaves, and to report from, which countries they will buy their supplies, with the quantities ordered, and also to state the countries from which they have received orders for manufactured products and the amounts, of intended exnortntion to each country. The plan is presented experimentally for a limited trial period, and. not as a substitute for either the Hague Convention or the Geneva Convention. The League Advisory Committee on Opium turned down (these suggestions in January, 1929. They have become pertinent, again with the committee’s -reorganisation and the council’s decision' to peek limitation of manufacture. The next conference at Geneva, it is hoped, will abolish !the evils perpetuated by the shortsightedness of the gathering there ffive years ago.