THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1909. THE INDOMITABLE OPIUM SMUGGLER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3142, 20 March 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1909. THE INDOMITABLE OPIUM SMUGGLER.

"Despite heavy" fines and all the precautionsjof the Customs officers, the smuggling of opium was on the increase," a Customs inspector informed fthe Sydney Central Police

Court recently. The statement might remind the public that the Federal prohibition of opium has given it an experience of such indomitable, ingenious and versatile law-dodging as must have introduced some points of novelty to the most intimate acquaintance with the resourceful ways of man when legislation purports to come between him and his pet desires. - In the Northern Territory recently it was discovered that a Chinese vegetable dealer had packed tins of opium into some pumpkins which hypocritically reposed in bis window. The Customs Department in Melbourne, according to an interesting report published by the Melbourne "Age," treasures the rind ol a lemon which had been used as a "chandoo" box. The drug has been put up for importation as "curios," it has been found strung round a man's body and stuffed into his socks, and among other devices to get it in we have had it thrown from an outgoing ship—which had been carefully searched before her | departure—into the waters of the ocean, to be picked up by launches cruising about, looking for the precious derelict. Upon opium smuggling are concentrated the Chinese desperate tenacity of his habit and his incomarapble wiliness. The inspector's explanation of the * increase in the traffic was that there are more Chinese than Customs officers, but probably the combination that has been mentioned pretty fully accounts for it. The opium "habjt" seems to bite further in than any other. This terrible pretinacity of the habit justifies the prohibition, and explains the recklessness and resoluteness of the smugglers. It is said that among Eastern peoples opium using does not wreak anything like as much havoc physically as is popularly pictured, though morally and in the destruction of moral stamina it must do incalculable harm. To white people it is potentially so malignant, and actually has produced such appalling effects on individuals, that public policy instinctively and in affright hastens to make as sure as may be that no chances are taken with the deadly thing., Yet the hahituated Chinese must have it if money can get it. A risk-profit of 100 per cent, insisted on by the/ trader does not discourage him, neither does great loss through confiscation and heavy fines. The craving that makes a thrifty people so callous to the cost of gratifying it attracts sympathy as well as wonder, and it has sometimes been suggested that it would be only fair to give the means of relief to a victim who might with some reason protest that it was the British Government that exposed him to the habit. Opium is generally regarded as the most valuable drug employed, and iia that capacity we can enjoy it freely and safely. But as a looso commodity every sensible community must draw / the line heavily and firmly against it.