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were smokers would be allowed to smoke until their death, and the non­
&moker would have no inducement to acquire the habit. If you do not limit
the supply, naturally the number of smokers will increase.
1251. But are we supplying more than the demand ?-If anybody can
go and buy chandu, naturally the supply is greater than the demand.
1252. From what you said a few minutes ago, I gather that at the
time you spoke of, 20 odd years ago, you thought that a large number of
coolies acquired the opium smoking habit here. Do you think that that still
obtains ?-I still think that the majority of opium smokers here acquire the
habit after they come to this place.
1253. Is that because they have more money to buy chandu than they
had in China ?-Quite so; they get a better wage here, whereas in China.
they could not afford it.
1254. You still think that a large number of the smokers among the
coolies contract the habit here. We have a very useful table here, the result
of an examination of 6 ships from China during November of this year.
The total number of adult deck passengers was 2,987 and the number of
opium smokers among those was 585: the percentage among the lauklreTzs
was 31 per cent and the percentage among the sinkhehs was 13 per cent?­
Those laukJ£ells might have contracted the habit before they returned to
China.
1255. Quite so; but they did not drop it in China. And then, as regards
the 13 per cent of sinkhehs corning down addicted to opium, so far as we
have been able to get the figures; I think that is rather more than the average
for the whole .of the Federated Malay States and Straits Settlements?­
Why not try and obtain figures over a longer period-say 6 months?
1256. I admit that the data are insufficient, but they give you an idea
of the prevalence of opium smoking at present in China. While opium is so
largely used in China as at the present momell't, can we do anything towards
suppressing its use here?-Yes, registration of the in-coming immigrants.
1257. Chairman.-At any rate, there are a great number of smokers
in the place at the present moment; we are agreed on that ?-Yes.
1258. It will require a large staff to register those, apart from issuing
!icences for the amounts they may buy?-Yes.
1259. And one-.seventh of them will have to be re-registered every
year if the population turns over once in 7 years?-That is so.
1260. So that un til the habit dies out, quite a large staff will be required
to run the thing?-Yes.
126I. Then, all that staff will not be Europeans, like myself, or high
class Chinese, like yourself; there will be more chintinjfs?-Yes; but if they
have to come and get their licences I do not see why you require more
chintings.
1262. Dr. Galloway.-There will be more smuggling ?-Yes.
1263. Chairman.-There will also be a very large class of informers
against the people who are breaking the registration' law grow up and
"planting" will become common. They will "plant" a pipe in an innocent
man's establishment and then corne and say that that man, who, perhaps,
has never smoked il). his life, is a smoker ?-But it is not an offence, because
they are allowed to smoke and they have only to get a licence.
1264. That is true, but it is an offence to drive a motor car if you
have not got a licence ?-But if that licence is easily procurable, I do not
see why there should be any trouble of that ·sort.
1265. But you do not mean to suggest that informers and chintings
and the lower order of Chinese are incorruptibles. I am suggesting to you
quite definitely from very vast experience of the question that the amount
of corruption that will arise with this registration and licensing is the most