The Washington times., 1923-03-06
NEW RULES
TOt;l)RB j
EVIL \

Menace and the League of Ma
tions.'
The pamphlet Is an Indictment
Of the laxity of legislation to con-
troll the drug traffic on the part
OF several great "civilized" nations.
Curiously enough it is not China
that is the chief source of the
deadly opium, but that nation Is
the victim of the cruel traffic,
Mathews says.
Chief Centers of Activity.
A large part of the crude opium
comes from Turkey and Persia, but
1t is in England, America, Ger
many and Japan where the chief
centers of manufacture of NOR.
phia, one of opium's most deadly
derivatives are located. The fol-
lowing paragraphs from Mathews
pamphlet give picture of the
regions where the poppy harvest"
is an industry.
IF we were to take a swift air
plane journey from the mediter-
ranean to the Pacific at the time
of the poppy harvest, we should
wings going across broad creamy
white spaces that, from a distance,
look as though they were covered
with cheese curds. These poppy
fields, literally white unto the
harvest we should discover in
Turkey, and from Thrace to Eu-
rope, across Anatolian Asia Minor
to Northern Mesopotamia, and
thence by the stairway of the
mountains that lead to the great
plateau to Persia where again, an
immense harvest would be found. !,
Flying thence eastward we should
growths of poppy in Afghanistan,
and then, entering the defiles of
the Khyber pass and crossing
North India we should find the
$4,000 acres of poppy in British
India, and in addition there are
over $4,000 acres grown by the
princes of some of the native
Indian states.
French Also Grow 1t.
''From India, across Burma we
should pass, to discover in French
Indo-China further poppy fields
and then, flying northeast across
the length and breadth OF the i'm
mense territories of China, our
flight would bring us to what is at
once the most tragic and curious
element of the whole worlds har-
vest
For in China today we have
q singular lapse, due, not to the
people themselves, nor to their
central government, but to the
Tuchuns, the warning military gov
ernors, that 'swaggering gang of
antediluvian swash bucklers' as Sir
John Jordan has vigorously called
them. who, lacking other sources
of revenue to pay their soldiers,
have been taxing the poor peasants
on the basis of the yield of an
opium crop, as opium is the most
remuneratiVe of all crops in China.
Thus, by sheer economic pressure
the Tuchun forces the peasant to
grow opium. In a vicious circle,
militarism and the pernicious drug
bolster each other up.
ITO q lesser extent we should
from our aiplane discover in the
dependencies of Japan Formosa
and Korea), and in parts of Man
churia, the development OF a poppy
harvest"
From British Fields.
1t is from these poppy fields,
Mathews points out, that the raw
material of the traffic in opium and
it's derivatives, chiefly morphine and
heroin, comes. Very little opium is
exported from China, but from all
the other fields, and especially
those Of British India, Turkey, and
Persia, the yield of the poppy fields
is sent to all parts of the world.
mo one knows" continues Math-
ews, what the total opium crop of
the world is, in the absence OF reli-
able statistics from China, Persia
and Turkey"
Besides the supply of opium
there is also cocaine, which is the
product Of the imported leaf of the
cocoa plant. The worlds supply of
cocaine comes chiefly from Bolivia.
Peru, Java and to a smaller extent,
Ceylon, British possession.
Another article will be published
tomorrow on international dope
SmuRgleTS who have made the mar.