Drugging a Nation

This is a Historical Book. The book tells that In September, 1906, an edict was issued from the Imperial Court at Peking which states China's predicament with naïveté and vigour". The cultivation of the poppy", runs the edict, in the authorized translation", is the greatest iniquity in agriculture, and the provinces of Szechuen, Shensi, Kansu, Yunnan, Kweichow, Shansi, and Kanghuai abound in its product, which, in fact, is found everywhere. Now that it is decided to abandon opium smoking within ten years, the limiting of this cultivation should be taken as a fundamental step … opium has been in use so long by the people that nearly three tenths or four tenths of them are smokers"". Three tenths or four tenths" of the Chinese people, one hundred and fifty million opium smokers mean three or four times the population of Great Britain, a good many more than the population of the United States! The Chinese are notoriously inexact in statistical matters.