THE DRUG EVIL
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sra,—It is rather curious that the League of Nations article on New Measures Against the Drug Evil," in your issue of July 27th, makes no allusion to the policy of I' Sting the output of the world's narcotic drug factories to the world's legitimate medical requirements—the policy recognized by your Govern- ment to be the most practical solution of the drug evil. Your representative on the League's Opium Committee, Sir Mal- colm Delevingnc, is quoted in the minutes of the April, 1928, Session of the Committee as follows :— " Sir Malcolm said that he did not dissent from the statement of M. Cavazzoni that the final solution of the problem was to be found only in the limitation of the manufacture of drugs. This had been for some time past the opinion of the British Govern- ment, which had made a statement to this effect on the occasion of the Opium Conference of 1924." (Page 93.) Your article claims, on the other hand, that " the main point " in regard to the output of the factories " is to check the illicit traffic."
Surely it would be better to limit the vastly excessive output (" The huge amounts seized showed how vastly the production of those factories was in excess of the world medical requirements."—Sir Malcolm Delevingne, Minutes, May, 1926, Session, League's Opium Committee, p. 88) of the offending factories than to attempt to check or otherwise control the peregrinations of the large surplus that is not used in medicine and that finds its way into the illicit traffic.—I am, Sir, &c., Lo8 Angeles. C. K. CRANE.
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