[Illustration: GROUP OF OPIUM SMOKERS]
DRUG
SMUGGLING AND TAKING
IN INDIA AND BURMA
BY
ROY. K. ANDERSON, F.R.S.A.
_Superintendent, Burma Excise Department_
“_So deep the power of these ingredients pierced_
_Even to the inmost seat of mental sight_”—PARADISE LOST
_ILLUSTRATED_
CALCUTTA AND SIMLA
THACKER, SPINK & CO.
1922
PRINTED BY
THACKER, SPINK & CO.
CALCUTTA
PREFACE.
At a time when the drug-evil, as it is called, is attracting so much
attention all over the world, it does not seem out of place to tell the
public something about how conditions in regard to it obtain in India and
Burma. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is no literature on
this subject outside “blue books,” and those admirable compilations are
notoriously dry reading. A novel called “_Dope_” by Sax Rohmer professes
to deal with the drug-evil and the traffic in drugs in the West; but
it is a novel; has a hero, a heroine, a forbidding type of detective,
and some degenerates, and a few impossible Chinamen in it, to give
verisimilitude to the title and all that it implies.
I do not profess to write as an authority on the subjects I have taken
up. I realise that there are scores of others more experienced, and
infinitely better able to make a book on these subjects than I am; but
there seems to be little hope of their ever getting the better of their
modesty and appearing in print. I write of what I have seen for myself,
and ventilate opinions I have formed which I expect no one to subscribe
to who differs from them. My readers may rest assured, however, that
what I relate is true. I have not consciously exaggerated, nor have I
suppressed facts. I write on a subject in which I am interested; and,
if the attention that has at different times been given to my verbal
accounts is an indication of something more than the polite toleration
of the raconteur, then there are others also who are interested, and I
need offer no apologies for my attempt to supply a deficiency in the
bookshelves of those who want more information.
A preface often affords the writer an opportunity of performing a
pleasant duty. That which I have to perform is to record my thanks to
Mr. F. W. Dillon, Barrister, and author of “_From an Indian Bar Room_,”
for the trouble he took in reading the manuscript, and his many helpful
suggestions.
R. K. ANDERSON.
REDFERN, _26th March, 1921_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE iii
CHAPTER
I. Smuggling and Smugglers 1
II. Bribery and Corruption 9
III. Informers and Information 14
IV. Some Anecdotes of Smugglers and Smuggling 20
V. More Anecdotes 28
VI. Observations on Smugglers and Smuggling 33
VII. Opium 35
VIII. Opium Smoking and Opium Eating 44
IX. Some Observations on the Opium Habit 51
X. Morphia 57
XI. Cocaine 65
XII. Hemp Drugs 75
APPENDIX. An Historical Note on Opium in India and
Burma 82
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Group of Opium Smokers Frontispiece
Facing page
An Excessive Opium Smoker 40
Opium Smokers’ Appliances 46
Preparing to Smoke Opium 48
Chinaman Smoking Opium 50
Group of Morphia Injectors 58
An Indian Morphinist 62
A Burman Cocaine Eater 72
SMUGGLING.
CHAPTER I.
SMUGGLING AND SMUGGLERS.
Everybody is a smuggler at heart!
Our innate free-trade instincts and love of liberty revolt against what
we look upon as uncalled for interference with our rights when we are
called upon to declare and pay duty on a box of cigars or a bottle of
whisky when we disembark at a Customs port; and we look upon evasions of
these obligations, not as evidences of moral obliquity, but as a very
proper exercise of the exemption which we claim as our right. On the
whole, this point of view is to be sympathized with, and in the case
of such innocuous articles as laces, scent, and feathers, it is to be
excused; the mysteries of the revenue law, and the underlying principles
of taxation, are unfamiliar to most of us. But a greater degree of
culpability must be attached to those who seek to evade the law by the
illicit importation of articles whose unrestricted use produces nothing
but harm; and while the former class of delicts may be classed as mere
revenue offences, the latter must be treated as crimes and severely
punished as such.
It is in the nature of things that articles which have come to be looked
upon as necessaries of life, such as tea, tobacco, wine and spirits,
should be taxed moderately; and indeed, were any attempt made to
render them less easily obtained by raising the taxes on them, unless
this course was vital in the interests of the country, there would be
just reasons for profound popular dissatisfaction and disgust; but in
the matter of noxious intoxicating drugs the case is reversed, and
authoritative opinion inclines to the highest taxation, or even to total
prohibition. Opium is taxed to a point little short of prohibition;
morphia and cocaine are entirely prohibited to the public except for
medical purposes; and hemp drugs are highly taxed in India, and totally
prohibited in Burma. Those who quarrel with this state of things are such
as have become habituated to these drugs, and of this class there is,
unhappily, a large number, so large a number indeed, that their demand
for a regular and sufficient supply constitutes a rich market, a market
which is supplied by the smuggler who reaps abundant profits.
As in the case of other articles of commerce—and smuggling is as much
a branch of commerce as the traffic in rice or jute—the scarcity or
abundance of supply of drugs is what regulates their price in the illicit
market. Normally, opium is sold from Government Opium Shops at from
Rs. 100 to Rs. 123 a seer. Illicitly, it costs from Rs. 200 to Rs. 300
a seer, and when scarce, from Rs. 350 to Rs. 400 a seer. Illicitly,
cocaine and morphia are sold at from five to six times the chemist’s
price. It is true that the smuggler has to pay and maintain a large staff
of assistants, and has to bear other heavy expenses, but the net profit
he eventually gets is a very substantial one.
It is impossible to entirely prevent smuggling: the interested motives of
mankind will always prompt them to attempt it. All that the Government
can do is to compromise with an offence which, whatever the criminal law
on the subject may say, appears to the mind of the smuggler, and of the
drug habitué he supplies, as not at all equalling in turpitude those acts
which are clear breaches of the elementary principles of ethics.
To the generality of people the smuggler is a bold, bad man with a
fierce, heavily-whiskered face, and armed to the teeth with knives,
pistols, and other lethal accoutrements. His surroundings are a rugged
cliff, with a roaring surf at its feet; while a dimly lit cave, stocked
with barrels of spirit and bales of tobacco, completes the mental
picture. In reality the smuggler—the Indian smuggler at any rate—is
nothing of the sort. To all appearances he is a respectable, well-to-do,
easy-going merchant with a flourishing business in piece-goods, rice,
or timber. But he is a thorough-paced smuggler for all that, and
his business is merely a blind to his real occupation which is the
importation and traffic in opium, cocaine, morphia, and hemp-drugs. It
is this business which is the real source of his wealth; it is his mind
that directs and accomplishes great ventures in smuggling.
To be successful as a smuggler, a man needs to have more than ordinary
ability. His powers of organization, and the ability to rapidly
appreciate a situation, must be of the first order, and in addition,
he must be endowed with an unusually large measure of low cunning and
deceit. It is true that the smuggler’s plans sometimes miscarry, but
this is usually owing to treachery on the part of one of his assistants.
The possibility of such treachery exemplifies the need the smuggler has
for a strong personality and ability to judge character, and appraise
men at their true worth; its infrequency testifies to the possession by
smugglers of these qualities in an unusual degree.
It must not be supposed that the smuggler takes a very active part in his
nefarious traffic; it is doubtful whether he ever sees the drugs for the
importation of which he is responsible. His assistants look to all minor
details, he only supplying the necessary money, and directing operations
as a general directs an army in the field. His host of underlings realise
only too well how relentless would be the fate that would overtake them
were they to “give away” their employer, for those who have proved
faithless to their trust have not survived long enough to enjoy the
fruits of their perfidy! The faithful ones know they have nothing to lose
or fear. Fines are paid by their employer, and jail has no terrors for
them, because their families are provided for by the smuggler while they
are away, and they return to their employment and the society of their
companions after release from a course of hard, healthful, muscle-forming
labour.
So far I have dealt exclusively with the man who smuggles in a large
and extended way. He might be likened to the big importer of ordinary
business. But, as in ordinary business, there are the retailers: those
who take the goods to the consumer. These men operate up-country, in the
sense that they work in the interior of the country. They may be agents
of the big men, or they may be merely his customers; but except that
their activities are confined, sometimes within the limits of a single
district, they are otherwise similar to the big men who live in the
cities. More often than not these men take an active and personal part in
disseminating drugs, and consequently coming frequently into contact with
the authorities, are more often brought to book for their misdemeanours.
But they do not have much at stake, and rarely risk more than they can
afford to lose if plans go wrong. Of course, there are these men in big
cities also; as a matter of fact there are a host of them in every big
city. To the square mile, there are many more consumers in a city than in
the interior, and as the big smuggler cannot be troubled with retailing
minute quantities of drugs, there is plenty to do for the lesser lights.
Why is it that these importers are never brought to book, is a question
that might reasonably be asked. The answer is simple. It is because they
never by chance handle the goods; they never allow it into their houses.
That a certain man is a smuggler is well known to the authorities. In
fact, the suspect will cheerfully admit it; he will even go as far as
telling them how it was that they failed to seize his last consignment
of contraband, and defy them to seize the next one he expects to import!
But he is perfectly acquainted with the law, and he knows that he cannot
be touched unless the contraband is found in his actual possession,
or, under such circumstances, within his house or its precincts, that
possession of it cannot be ascribed to anyone but himself. The law
prescribes a punishment for any person who, according to general repute,
earns his living, wholly or in part, by opium or morphia trafficking. The
smuggler evades the first part of this provision by keeping a mercantile
business going; and relies upon his personality, and the dread he
inspires in those who might otherwise seek to interfere with him, for
avoiding the second. The instinctive reluctance of respectable people to
make themselves party to judicial proceedings, and a very understandable
fear of extremely unpleasant consequences to themselves, deters them
from coming forward to give evidence against the smuggler, and this is
a great handicap to this very excellent piece of legislation. All that
the executive can hope to do is to seize as much of his contraband as
possible, and so, gradually, deprive him of the means to carry on his
trade.
Smugglers have been reduced to impotence in this way, by repeated seizure
of their wares, but their number is not numerous. The weak link in the
chain that can be wound round the smuggler is, indubitably, the corrupt
preventive officer. It is regrettable, but nevertheless true, that a
proportion of the preventive staff is corrupt and amenable to bribes. The
smuggler pays them handsomely to keep their eyes closed, and their mouths
shut, and being poorly paid by Government the temptation to bribery,
which swells their monthly incomes to four or five times what they
legitimately earn, is too great to resist. Besides this, many of the men
recruited are not of the type most suitable. Their ideals of honesty are
nebulous, self-respect to them consists merely in wearing clean clothes.
It is a fact that a certain official once appointed his man-servant to
the subordinate grade of a preventive department. Rumour had it that
this servant was brother to the woman this official was keeping as his
mistress, but that was mere scandal, and probably untrue. At the same
time, one cannot expect much from a staff which can be recruited in
so haphazard a manner. In other walks of life, the need for cautious
recruitment is not so vital, and the need to pay for honesty is not so
great as in departments whose duty it is to safeguard the revenue, and
ensure the moral welfare of the people. It should be made a principle
that for every ten rupees paid for actual work, fifty rupees will be
paid for its honest performance. The need for this is accentuated in
departments in which cupidity, which exists to a greater or less extent
in every man, is excited and tempted to the utmost.