The League of Nations

The Permanent Central Opium Board

THE Permanent Central Opium Board constituted last Janu- ary under the Geneva Convention of 1925 has now held three sessions—the last of them ended on October 11th—and its members are getting to grips with a subject the bewildering complexity of which none of them can have fully realized. The third session was concerned chiefly with the ques- tion of the annual returns which the 1925 Convention empowers the Board to call for from the signatory States and, though most of the deliberations were carried on in private, the proceedings of the public meetings indicate that the task of compiling a water-tight statistical form has proved by no means easy.

DIFFICULTIES OF ADMINISTRATION.

• The trouble is that the 1925 Convention itself is not water- tight. Medicinal opium, for example, has been excluded from the list of drugs about which governments are obliged to supply information to the Board. Again, seizures of drugs in the illicit traffic are only to be reported if they are made at the frontier. If the traffickers elude the vigilance of the Customs authorities but are caught later in the interior, the Central Board is not supposed to hear anything about them. Nothing need be said about the amount of raw opium and coca leaves used in the manufacture of tinctures, &c. Yet a very large part—one authority puts it at eighty per

cent—of the raw opium imported into European countries

and legitimately consumed is used in the form of tinctures and extracts. Moreover, cocaine can be manufactured from South American (not Javan) coca leaves in any kitchen at the rate of one kilo of cocaine per 100 kilos of coca leaves. The shrub grows wild in several countries, notably Bolivia and Peru, and there is no means of checking the quantity of leaves harvested since neither Bolivia nor Peru supplies the necessary information.

Another difficulty is the fact that the number of different drugs which can be manufactured from the opium poppy and coca leaves is little less than legion. Apart from this, how- ever, there are quite a number of these derivatives, codeine for example, which are useless to the illicit trafficker and are

therefore quite naturally not included in the list of preparations bn which statistics are required. But some of these harmless products can be reconverted. into habit-forming drugs without much trouble.

Yet another snag for the unfortunate Board is the impos- sibility at present of getting the countries to compile their statistics in a uniform way. The Board has already asked for, and in many cases actually received, two quarterly returns of exports and imports, so no doubt it has already had some practical experience of this difficulty. Some countries do not send statistics at all. Several signatories to the Convention have not yet passed the necessary legislation to enable them to supply the whole of the information required. Some of those at a distance from Geneva not unnaturally send their returns in somewhat late. One country will describe as " raw" opium what another will call " medicinal " opium. There is a difference of opinion about the meaning of the word "consumption." Sometimes, when a consign- ment of drugs is exported at the end of the period with which the return deals, it does not appear in the statistics of the importing country until the following period. Some countries include the weight of packing material, as for example, the glass containers of the liquid preparations, while others exclude it. Who again ought to submit returns for such places as Liechtenstein, Andorra, Vatican City, Monaco and so forth which are in Customs unions with their neighbours ? At present it would seem that the figures are sometimes sent twice over and sometimes not at all.

CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS.

It need not be imagined, however, from this formidable, though greatly abridged, list that the Geneva Opium Con- vention of 1925 is unworkable. Given the necessary tact and efficiency on the part of the Board and corresponding good will, coupled with the desire to co-operate, on the part of the nations of the world, the Convention is quite workable. Whether the necessary conditions exist as yet still remains to be seen. Meanwhile excessive optimism is obviously not war- ranted by the facts.

Another matter which occupied the attention of the Central Board was the proposal of the British Delegation in the Fifth Committee of the Assembly last month to ask the Advisory Committee on Opium to go into the question of holding an international conference on the limitation of the manufacture of drugs. This, however, is not the direct concern of the Board, and it is expected that the Advisory Committee will meet in January to discuss the matter.. There does not seem much prospect of the conference being called before next October. Meanwhile, what it will do when it meets forms an interesting subject for surmise. It is already certain that some of the countries participating will take the line that it is useless to reduce production unless the illicit channels are closed at the same time. The argument is something like this : imagine the total world production of habit-forming drugs going into a reservoir with two outlet pipes, one for the legitimate and the other for the illegitimate trade. If you reduce the total amount in the reservoir without closing the illegitimate pipe, you must inevitably reduce the amount available from your reservoir for the legitimate trade, thereby necessitating enhanced prices for the people you say are entitled to a regular supply.

There is, no doubt, a great deal to be said for this argument. But how is the illicit traffic to be stopped ? Clearly, the only inviolable way is to have an untappable pipe-line from field and factory right into the legitimate consumer's arm or stomach. This involves an impeccable staff at the factory and impeccable cultivators ; impeccable transport men, govern- ment officials, Customs House officers, warehousemen, doctors, nurses and chemists. Can any nation say that such a con- dition exists within its borders to-day ? And if it did exist somewhere, there would still be knaves outside looking for ill and easily gotten gains. Although England probably has as clean a sheet as any country in the world in this respect, it is by no means immune from infection. Not many years ago, for instance, it was suddenly discovered that the opium poppy was being grown on quite a considerable scale in a quiet country district not fifty miles from London to the great financial benefit (for a brief period only) of a certain local chemist.

THE EDUCATIONAL METHOD.

The only real and permanent remedy for the drug evil is to educate the public mind away from any desire for narcotics and to abolish the social and economic conditions which foster their use as a convenient means of escaping for a time from the sordidness of every-day existence. Until the leaven of such a programme has worked its way well into the dough of human experience, preventive work on a large scale will be necessary, for demand always brings a supply in its train, and then the supply itself works up an increased demand.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty which the Central Board and its coadjutors in the Home Offices of the world have to face in their struggle against the drug menace is that if you suppress or curtail manufacture in one place it promptly springs up in another—invariably somewhere less accessible than before. Thus, there is now a morphia factory in Persia. Another has recently been started in Constantinople. Inci- dentally, Turkey has not adhered to the Geneva Convention and cannot be arraigned before the Bar of the League as she is not a member. Moreover, she grows vast quantities of opium herself, and if her own production is not enough there is more to be had from Serbian Macedonia. Doubtless the poppy would also flourish in South Russia. At present there is nothing that the Central Board can do 1bout it, except tell the world. The public opinion of the world, if well and truly stirred, may be relied upon in time to work the oracle, even in Turkey. But it must be an informed public opinion, conscious, though not too much in awe, of the many and serious difficul- ties ; enthusiastic and persevering, but not impatient. Per- haps the chief task of the Central Board, and one which it has not yet tackled, will be to educate world public opinion on