FROM STATISTICAL ABSTRACT RELATING TO BRITISH INDIA, 1905-6 TO 1911-15. PAGE 181. TABLE 164. EXPORTS OF OPIUM TO VARIOUS COUNTRIES.
French Indo-China £ 129,502 291,425 Java 472,199 282,252 Siam 164,030 204,328 China-Hongkong 1,084,093 110,712 Straits Settlements 226,500 80,572 United Kingdom 927 2,907 1,180 18,433 58,148 Treaty Ports, China 27,833 0 Macao 18,295 0 Japan 119,913 100,659 Other countries 19,223 47,543 ---------- ---------- Total £2,280,031 1,175,639
In an article which appeared in the _New York Times_, under date of February 14, 1919, we read: "A charge that the Japanese Government secretly fosters the morphia traffic in China and other countries in the Far East is made by a correspondent in the _North China Herald_ in its issue of December 21st last. The correspondent asserts that the traffic has the financial support of the Bank of Japan, and that the Japanese postal service in China aids, although 'Japan is a signatory to the agreement which forbids the import into China of morphia or of any appliances used in its manufacture or application.'
"Morphia no longer can be purchased in Europe, the correspondent writes. The seat of industry has been transferred to Japan, and morphia is now manufactured by the Japanese themselves. Literally, tens of millions of yen are transferred annually from China to Japan for the payment of Japanese morphia....
"In South China, morphia is sold by Chinese peddlers, each of whom carries a passport certifying that he is a native of Formosa, and therefore entitled to Japanese protection. Japanese drug stores throughout China carry large stocks of morphia. Japanese medicine vendors look to morphia for their largest profits. Wherever Japanese are predominant, there the trade flourishes. Through Dairen, morphia circulates throughout Manchuria and the province adjoining; through Tsingtao, morphia is distributed over Shantung province, Anhui, and Kiangsu, while from Formosa morphia is carried with opium and other contraband by motor-driven fishing boats to some point on the mainland, from which it is distributed throughout the province of Fukien and the north of Kuangtung. Everywhere it is sold by Japanese under extra-territorial protection."