Word: opium
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...proposal for ending the opium trade is contained in two seemingly simple proposals...
...control production of opium by forbidding the cultivation of the deadly poppy, except for medicinal and scientific usage...
...suppress progressively within ten years the opium-smoking habit by decreasing proportionately the importations of the drug. After the tenth year, importation and production, except for medicinal and scientific needs, are to be entirely prohibited...
...nations that were most interested in the opium subject were the U. S., Britain, France, the Netherlands. The reason for this is not remote; the U. S. has the Philippines, Britain has India, France has large interests in the Orient, the Netherlands administer an empire in the East Indies. In all these countries, the opium evil is felt to a great extent, and a sincere desire is felt in common for a satisfactory eradication of one of the world's greatest scourges; but differences of opinion arose on the means by which a scotching of opium production...
Lord Cecil's comment (subsequently indorsed by France- and the Netherlands) on the U. S. plan was, in effect, "Impossible! The time's much too short." Briefly, the noble lord wanted 15 years in which to suppress opium smoking, but he did not want that period to begin "until a date on which the effective execution of measures taken 'by China to suppress the growth of the opium poppy has reached such a stage as to remove the danger of opium smuggling from China into those territories...