Roy K. Anderson

“ 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. ”

“ The abject wretch who becomes possessed of a few coppers, realizing that the amount will be insufficient for a square meal, buys an innocent looking packet of cocaine, and mixing it with a small quantity of the lime-paste used by betel-chewers in their quids, smears the mixture on his gums, and slowly swallows the saliva. Gone are the cravings for food; a feeling of pleasant warmth suffuses his wasted body; he feels equal to any exertion. Images are distorted to immense proportions ”

“ But one has only to give the matter a moment’s consideration to see how diametrically opposed to all one’s notions of fair-play and honour must be the nature and calling of an informer. He must for a time pose as the friend and confidant of his victim, and then turn traitor; and he must bribe, coerce, and wheedle from their allegiance scores of subordinates who would otherwise serve their masters with unswerving loyalty. He is the tempter in excelsis; he is unscrupulous in the extreme; he is utterly bad. ”

“ 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 [4] 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. ”

“ I do not believe that opium in India or China does any great harm to the majority of those who use it, i.e., to moderate smokers and eaters. But here, in Burma, we are brought face to face with the fact that the religion of the people specifically denounces the use of the drug; that their native kings treated its use as a heinous offence; that these ideas are so deeply rooted in the minds of the people that every consumer feels himself to be, and is, regarded by his neighbours as a sinner and a criminal ”

“ Some Observations on the Opium Habit.
It is now proper that we should ask the question “Is opium the very dreadful thing it is made out to be?” My answer is, yes and no. Anything immoderately indulged in is bad for one. Over-eating, excess in smoking and drinking, are all bad. There is such a thing as too much of even a good thing. I am prepared to admit that excess in opium is worse than most things; but as a choice between opium and drink, I consider drunkenness to be the greater evil. It may be that it is more common, and therefore responsible for more distress in the world than opium ”

“ To be a slave in any degree to anything is bad; the tobacco habit is bad; the over-eating habit is bad. But opium comes in for too much [56] of the attention of religious propagandists, and the Government is taxed with the charge of reaping revenue at the expense of the bodies and souls of the people. This is a view it is the duty of anyone who knows the subject intimately to correct. The Royal Commission on Opium in India, which sat under the chairmanship of Lord Brassey, some thirty years ago, collected a mass of evidence for and against opium which is unrivalled in its extent and value. ”

“ I say, I have met men of wretched physique who are opium consumers, and men of wretched physique who are not opium consumers. Also, I have met giants in strength who are not opium consumers, and giants in strength who are confirmed opium consumers. I will also say this, that among the hard-working class of Indians and Burmans, such as coolies and porters, the proportion of consumers to non-consumers is about equal, but I have been able to observe no inferiority in capacity in the consumers, and very often have found them superior. ”

“ Of all those who threaten the smuggler with arrest and loss, the informer is the one he fears most, and accordingly regards with bitter hatred as his greatest foe.
Without information, the hands of the executive are tied; without informers, they would be wholly ineffective; and except for a chance seizure now and then, there would be little for them to do. As things are, the organization of a detective department is so linked up with informers and information that one finds it difficult to conceive of its existing with these eliminated. ”

“ A glance, as the sheet which covers him is withdrawn from his body, sends a thrill of horror through us, and we turn away sickened at the sight; and the man—is he a man?—draws his cloth over his tattered body, and tries to woo sleep again. This last sight is enough to send us headlong into the fresh air and sunlight. If these are the results of morphia, then God have mercy upon its votaries, for they stand sorely in need of it! ”

“ It is a perpetuation of the genesiac myth of the forbidden fruit; and no matter how optimistic some may be that the opium habit will eventually be stamped out, it is to be feared that this cannot come about until human nature ceases to be what it always has been. This contention applies with special cogency to the opium habit whose insistence in our midst is not only owing to the fact that it satisfies the sensuousness and voluptuousness which forms a part of every man’s nature, but that it establishes a dominance over its victims which requires almost super-human power of will to overthrow. ”

“ It is a pity that reformers do not pursue their propaganda along reasonable and obvious lines, because they would have more supporters and helpers if they did. To publish fulminatory pamphlets against the opium evil, without having any experience of it at first hand beyond an occasional hurried visit to an opium den, is worse than futile; and they cannot hope to convince those who are really in a position, and qualified to help them in their efforts. ”

“ They are willing to pay almost any price for the drugs they want; they are grown up people and well able to judge for themselves; why should I not make a fortune by supplying them with their wants at my own price?” This is a form of reasoning which contains no fallacy for a man unacquainted with the principles of ethics, and it is certain that the smuggler has not burdened his mind with such learning, admirable as it may be.
His offence against the revenue laws provides the smuggler with a never-ending source of pure delight. ”

“ As an inducement to seize contraband, Government pays its preventive staff money-rewards which bear a ratio to the value of the stuff seized, and the ability displayed in seizing it; and an officer who is active and conscientious very often can earn in this way from three to four times the amount of his monthly salary. But the seizing of contraband is by no means easy, as the smuggler has brought concealment to a fine art, and there seems to be no end to the ingenuity which may be exercised by him in getting his consignments through safely to their destination. ”

“ We become aware of a peculiar odour in the atmosphere of the room, not unpleasant, but peculiar. It is like nothing that we have ever sniffed before. It is the odour of smoked [47] opium. When our eyes, having got used to the light, or rather darkness, of the room, we look round and see on the platforms, sleeping forms sprawled round trays containing their smoking utensils. ”

“ People might well ask how it is that so much corruption can go on and yet no one be caught and punished. Now, it is a well-known principle of evidence that one man’s word is as good as another’s, and in law, no matter how convincing the truth of a man’s story might be, it must usually be corroborated before a magistrate will convict. ”

“ There is little to be said in defence of the morphia habit. It is bad, utterly bad, in itself, while it is a fertile disseminator of disease when injected as it is. Morphia ruins a man, body and soul. As is the case with opium, pain is a frequent originator of the habit, but its hold upon the individual is, if anything, stronger than that exerted by opium, and fatal consequences ensue with great certainty and rapidity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Early in the seventh century after Christ, the religion of Islam was established in Arabia. By the commandments of this new religion the use of alcohol was absolutely forbidden, and it is supposed that those who had been used to alcohol began to use opium and hemp drugs as substitutes, the fact that these two drugs were not explicitly mentioned being sufficient sanction, apparently, for their use. It seems certain that with the spread of Islamism, the use of opium as a stimulant became more widely diffused. The Arabs were at that time, to all intents and purposes, masters of the eastern seas. ”

“ May it not, however, be that a man whose desire it is to become reckless purposely resorts to the drug to hearten himself? I think it is very likely. It is often discovered, after a man has run amok, that he has for some time been broody or sulky, and suffering under some real or imagined wrong. That he should get desperate, and take in excess what he well knows to be is an excitant infinitely more powerful than alcohol, in order to carry through what he has been longing for some time to do, is not altogether unreasonable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are as clamorous against opium and other things in a more censurable ignorance of facts. Some who will not clear their minds of cant, declaim against a glass of wine with all the fervour and denunciation of fanatics, without rhyme, reason, or apprehension of what they are talking about. ”

“ Sometimes a deep groan escapes from his breast, most likely when the dismal solitude around him inspires his imagination with some terrific vision, which he is as little able to banish, as voluntarily to dismiss his dreams of ideal felicity. ”

“ Secure from intrusion he crouches in an obscure corner, his eyes immovably fixed upon one spot; and the almost automatic motion of the hand raising the coca to the mouth, and its mechanical chewing, are the only signs of consciousness which he exhibits. ”

“ This is a factor which is lost sight of by most of those who declaim against the occasional glass or pipe. They wish to push temperance to the point of total abstinence, and condemn the man who takes a peg of whisky without evil results, with the man who becomes maudlin after taking a single glass of white wine, for it is only by outward appearances they are able to judge. But leaving them to rage in their ignorance, we must recognise the fact that opium is one of those drugs the effects of which depend largely upon personal idiosyncrasy and toleration. ”

“ The cocaine-habit is an unmixed vice. There is no excuse for it; not even the excuse that the opium and morphia habits have, viz., accident; and the person who takes to it, does so wilfully and deliberately. Cocaine has a greater power over its votaries than either opium or morphia; the after distress is keener; and a slave to it is a slave indeed. And the harm it does, and the certainty with which it eventually kills, is truly appalling.
A Burman Cocaine Eater
[72]
Extreme poverty is frequently a cause of the habit. ”