Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1911 — HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES

Country Aghast at Opium Consumption

Philadelphia, Pa.—The recent raids on opium smugglers made in New York and other cities'by federal officers are preliminary to a na-tion-wide crusade by the authorities in Washington to check the ravages of the opium habit. Government statistics reveal that more opium is consumed in this country per capita than in Chiba. Four hundred thousand pounds of crude opium are imported annually and the iraids show that vast quantities are smuggled. The population of the United States is 91,000,000. The annual consumption of opium in China In all forms is £600,000 pounds. China’s population ra more than four 'hundred million. One of the largest Importers of ■opium in the United States called the attention of the National Civic Federation to the frightful growth of the evil. “The figures speak for themselves,” he said in an address on the Isubject at a banquet of druggists in 'Philadelphia. “Unless an effective check is put on the opium evil it will sap the physical as well as the moral (Strength of the nation. “Germany, with a population of

about 60,000,000, consumes only 16,000 pounds, as against the 400,000 pounds actually accounted for in this country; in Italy, with a population of 33,000,000, the- consumption is about 6,000 pounds; in Austria-Hungary, whose combined population is nearly 50,000,000, the annual consumption does not exceed 4,000 pounds; Holland, with a population of 6,000,000, consumes 3,000 pounds annually. “In Europe there are 145,000,000 people who consume annually only about 30,000 pounds of the drug, while our population of 100,000,000, by import figures, consumes more’than ten times that amount, to say nothing of the vast quantity that is clandestinely brought Into the country.” President Taft urges immediate action to check the growth of the evil. There is now pending in both branches of congress a measure, known as the Cullom-Foster bill, to control the traffic *by subjecting it to heavy internal revenue taxes. The bill also provides for a practically prohibitive tax —$200 a pound—on smoking opium. The control of other forms, principally morphine, will be more difficult, it is conceded, although it is said that in that form the drug is most widely used. The highest medical authorities estimate that 50,000 pounds of opium should suffice for the medical needs of the United States yearly, and that fully 75 per cent of the 400,000 pounds Imported is manufactured into morphine.