The Crisis in Persia
SIR,—Will Mr. Philips Price please inform us whether the cultivation of end addiction to narcotics, like opium and Indian hemp, is controlled and repressed by Soviet Communist rule in Central Asia, or is it encouraged ? To what extent are Persians generally addicted to indulgence in opium and Indian hemp ? A journalist who visited Persia about 1946 and spent some months in certain villages wrote that he found that the tribesmen smoked opium after each meal.—Yours, &c., ANTIDOPE. [Mr. Philips Price writes: " It is true that a certain amount of opium is smoked in Persia, more, I believe, in some districts than in others. The Persian Government has made fitful attempts to suppress it, but the prevailing corruption makes progress slow. The cultivation and use of opium in Soviet Central Asia is forbidden. As to whether this prohibi- tion is fully carried out, I should not like to say, but it is probably more effective there than in Persia."]
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