OPIUM AND DRUGS

Wairarapa Age, 14 March 1927, Page 5

OPIUM AND DRUGS

LEAGUE COUNCIL DISCUSSION.

AN UNDISCOVERED SOURCE. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE MOOTED. (Received Sunday, 5.5 p.m.) GENEVA, March 12. The League of Nations Council discussed the opium and drug traffic. M. Zaleski said he was confident the Council would agree to the proposal mado by the representative of Great Britain that it was important to discover the source of supply open to illicit traffickers. It was evident that drugs were being obtained in large quantities from some undiscovered source. Apparently enormous quantities of drugs were being exported to l China by post, and the Council considered it advisable that the attention of the Governments of Europe should be drawn to this" fact. The Council decided to empower the Opium Committee to call an international conference to discuss the whole question. Sir Austen Chamberlain said he would be glad if the Chinese Government would send the League Commission a report on the results’ of the seizure of opium by the Chinese Customs/—(A. and N.Z.)

GROWTH OF ILLICIT TRAFFIC. GENEVA, March 11. Alarming evidence of the growth of the illicit traffic in drugs is contained in the report of an advisory comjnittee on the traffic in opium presented to the League Council. It mentions that on one occasion the Italian police captured a consignment of 165 pounds of morphine, 116 of heroin, and fifty-three of cocaine. It is estimated that the illicit traffic in cocaine within India amounts to forty times the legitimate import. The head of the committee mentions that though fifty-two States signed a contract drastically to control the traffic, only the British Empire, Portugal and Salvador have fulfilled their obligations, with France, Czecho-Slo-vakia and Holland about to comply. Colonel Macormack, the Persian Government’s adviser, replying to a suggestion that Persia should substitute other crops for opium, said the chief manufacturing and distributing countries were Britain, Germany,' France, Switzerland and the United 'States, but only one per cent, of the supplies were obtained from Persia. The main source of supply was Turkey. However, the Persian Government was prepared to experiment with the Council’s proposals. The Western countries did not want Persian opium because it contained insufficient morphine. — (Sydney “Sun.”)