The Red Opium Conspiracy

There is no longer any doubt that Red China is by all odds the biggest contributor to the international illicit traffic in opium, morphine and heroin. And there is no doubt either that this is an officially promoted enterprise. Refugees who had been employed in the nefarious business have brought out full information about the extent of poppy cultivation, the smuggling of opium into Siam and Burma from government warehouses in Yunnan; the location of many-factories in cities that are under rigid Red policy control where opium is converted into morphine base, morphine and heroin; and the government patronage of the export traffic.

For three years (1953-1955) Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, Treasury Department, submitted to the annual April meeting of the UN Narcotics Commission detailed and well documented reports on all of this. Before the meeting was held this year, the friends of Red China had it shifted from New York to Geneva where such revelations would get less press coverage; and the Commissioner did not bother to go there. At the Geneva session of the UN Commission this Past April, Thailand’s spokesman was permitted to say that his country’s troubles with narcotics came down “from the North,” but there was no mention of the fact that Red China was responsible for the heaviest of all contributions to the illicit traffic in opium and its derivatives.

RG

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Rodney Gilbert

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There is no longer any doubt that Red China is by all odds the biggest contributor to the international illicit traffic in opium, morphine and heroin. And there is no doubt either that this is an officially promoted enterprise. Refugees who had been employed in the nefarious business have brought out full information about the extent of poppy cultivation, the smuggling of opium into Siam and Burma from government warehouses in Yunnan; the location of many-factories in cities that are under rigid Red policy control where opium is converted into morphine base, morphine and heroin; and the government patronage of the export traffic.

For three years (1953-1955) Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, Treasury Department, submitted to the annual April meeting of the UN Narcotics Commission detailed and well documented reports on all of this. Before the meeting was held this year, the friends of Red China had it shifted from New York to Geneva where such revelations would get less press coverage; and the Commissioner did not bother to go there. At the Geneva session of the UN Commission this Past April, Thailand’s spokesman was permitted to say that his country’s troubles with narcotics came down “from the North,” but there was no mention of the fact that Red China was responsible for the heaviest of all contributions to the illicit traffic in opium and its derivatives.