The Drug Trade Hydra The statement in the report of
the Central Opium Board to the League of Nations Council that while control of the legitimate trade in narcotic drugs has become thoroughly effective the illicit traffic is still rampant is sufficiently -disturbing. Alarming figures regarding the number of' drug addicts in the United States and Canada are embodied in the report, and since such addicts must have obtained their drugs from some illicit source it is of the first importance to discover what that source is and take whatever steps may be possible to stop the flow from it. It is believed that the few illicit factories known to exist in Europe have been closed down, the governments of Turkey and Bulgaria in particular having shown coin- Mendable activity in the Matter.' There remains the Far EaSt, for opium products are at least as likely to reach the United States across the Pacific as 'across the Atlantic. Japan is .a signatory of the various opium conventions and still"Sends a representative to attend the meetings of the Opium Advisory Commission at Geneva, but obviously there is not the same hold On her as when she was still a member of .the League of Nations. It was always recognised that to bring the legitiniate trade under full control would at once give a Stimulus to the illicit traffic. It must be realised, none the less, that until this illicit traffic 'is to a large extent stifled, the united efforts of the world to stamp out the evil Will only' he meeting with very limited success.
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