Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 23, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 49.

Health and Temperance.

The Curse of China.

RAPID GROWTH OF OPIUM-SMOKING IN THE FLOWERY KINGDOM.

THE growers of opium in India are much alarmed over the rapid decrease in their exports to China. The poppy fields of the Flowery Kingdom are driving the foreign product from the market. There is a law in China forbidding opium-raising, but it has been a dead-letter ever since England, simply because she was deriving an annual income of $6,000,000 from the tax on Indian opium, forced China to reopen her market to the drug.

Opium-growing for several years past has been rapidly increasing in China. About one-third of the cultivated land in Yunnan is now devoted to poppy-raising. Travelers describe the valleys of Southwestern China as white with poppy-blossoms. China is now raising about two-thirds of all the opium she consumes. Other foreign opium also is coming into competition with the Indian product. The Mozambique Opium Company is putting 50,000 acres of land in the lower Zambesi Valley into opium, and the African product is already selling in the Shanghai market.

Meanwhile the curse of opium-smoking weighs more heavily every year upon the people of China. One-fifth of the population of Peking and Tientsin are opium smokers. It is said that 3,000 of the attaches of the imperial palace are victims of the terrible habit, in spite of the fact that the Chinese Government discourages the practice. There are a number of native anti-opium societies, which are doing a work in China similar to that of our temperance unions here. The Government has also established a large number of refuges, where victims of the opium habit may go for treatment. Sedatives, stimulants, and tonics are administered to cure them of the vice.

Great Britain herself is likely soon to suffer some of the evils with which she has helped to curse China. In parts of India the opium habit is making alarming progress among the natives. The Marquis Tseng called attention to this fact in a letter to the Anti-Opium Society of England the other day. He added that if Great Britain would put a stop to the exportation of opium from India, China would effectually stop the growing of opium within her territories. He said China was willing to co-operate with Great Britain in striking at the root of the evil.—N. Y. Sun.