The CHAIRMAN. But it is an absolutely necessary drug?

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes; it is a necessary drug.

Mr. TEMPLE. Is the opinion you have expressed as to the uselessness of heroine for medicine based on the general opinion of the medical profession? Doctor LAMBERT. I will say the majority of opinion, rather than general. I think that is a fair statement.

The CHAIRMAN. I believe a medical association passed a resolution three or four years ago agreeing that the use of heroin should be suppressed. What association was that?

Doctor LAMBERT. I think it was the American Medical Association.

The CHAIRMAN. Cocaine is the active principle extracted from the coca leaf? About how long has it been since the discovery of cocaine?

Doctor LAMBERT. The local anesthetic was discovered in 1884.

A man

working with it touched his eye accidentally and found his eye anæsthetized. The CHAIRMAN. That happened in Darmstadt, Germany? Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. The first discovery, as I understand it, was made by travelers in Peru, who hired Indians to carry their baggage, and noticed the Indians: chewing these leaves instead of food?

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes; it increased enormously their physical endurance. The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions on this first paragraph? Mr. ACKERMAN. How long has heroin been known?

Doctor LAMBERT. It has, as a drug, been used since 1909-about that time. It has been known, I think, since 1898.

The CHAIRMAN. If the gentlemen of the committee will number the paragraphs in their copies of the resolution, that will facilitate questioning.

Mr. SABATH. As to the last provision, in the first paragraph, where you say “is increasing and spreading," would the witness be in position to say to what extent?

The CHAIRMAN. We will have other testimony on that. There is no way of telling the extent of it because there is no way of definitely ascertaining the number of addicts. It is all a matter of opinion.

Mr. COLE. Would a question as to the extent of either of these drugs in patent medicine be in order?

The CHAIRMAN. Certainly, if the witness knows.

Mr. COLE. Is the habit formed through those patent medicines?

Doctor LAMBERT. To Some certain extent; yes. How great an extent you can not gauge very well, but it is formed to some extent.

Mr. COLE. Is there any law regulating the use of these drugs in patent medicines?

Doctor LAMBERT. It comes under the Harrison Act. There is a lot of patent medicines that are exempted because they do not contain sufficient of the drug to come under the act. You can find more on that subject if you will go to the Treasury Department on that. There is a certain amount of habit forming by patent medicines; very distinctly so.

The CHAIRMAN. The patent medicines you refer to are Bateman's drops, Godfrey's cordial. Also paregoric, although, of course, paregoric is not a - patent medicine.

Doctor LAMBERT. That is an official preparation, U. S. P., that can be bought, and it contains 2 grains of opium to the ounce.

Mr. MOORE of Virginia. How is cocaine taken or administered as a drug? Doctor LAMBERT. It is either snuffed up into the nose or taken hypodermically.

Mr. MOORE of Virginia. The common method is what?

Doctor LAMBERT. Snuffing it.

The CHAIRMAN. Addicts put it on the finger and snuff it.

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. I call the attention of the committee to paragraph 3. Doctor LAMBERT. I will answer the gentleman that heroin is frequently snuffed, too.

Mr. MOORE of Virginia. Less commonly than taken in the other way?
Doctor LAMBERT. No; there is a lot of snuffing of heroin.

The CHAIRMAN (reading):

Whereas the annual production of opium is approximately 1,500 tons, of which less than 75 tons, according to the best available information, is required for medicinal and scientific purposes, and the growth of coca leaves is likewise greatly in excess of that required adequately to provide for the same purposes. Is that statement substantially correct?

Doctor LAMBERT. That is approximately true.

The CHAIRMAN. You were kind enough to furnish me with information in regard to the production of opium. Opium is produced in paying quantities in a limited area in India, Persia, and Turkey.

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. I am excluding the Chinese.

Doctor LAMBERT. China wiped out nearly all of her opiuin production, but during the present rebellion it has crept up again wherever the general in military control of an area was willing to have it creep out. So it varies.

The CHAIRMAN. Perhaps a little explanation from me at that point is necessary. I purposely omitted reference to China because we are all more or less familiar with the pathetic struggle of China against the opium traffic for the last 150 years. In 1907 as a result of an agreement with the British Empire whereby the shipment of raw opium into China was to be decreased 10 per cent a year for 10 years, and in 1914 China, on her part, had practically destroyed the traffic in gum or prepared opium. Prepared opium is the opium used for smoking purposes. Later the opium was shipped to other countries and according to the best information I can obtain considerable quantities of morphine (active principle of opium) now go into China illicitly the extent of which we do not know, but I thought in drawing this resolution that it would be very much out of place to ask China to agree to a principle that she has been advocating for a century and a half.

Now, Doctor, as to the production in Turkey, I am reading from your letter, "the best information I can obtain of the amount of opium purchased in Turkey shows an average of 7,000 chests annually, each chest containing 150 pounds, while in a good year the amount rises to 12,000 chests. That amount varies from 1,050,000 pounds to 1,800,000 pounds. The Turkish opium contains 12 per cent morphine, while the Indian opium contains on an average only 8 per cent." Upon what do you base those figures?

Doctor LAMBERT. I based them upon some English Government publications. The CHAIRMAN. Official publications?

Doctor LAMBERT. Official publications. Since the war Turkey has not produced as much. It has dropped down to 3,000 chests, I noticed, the other day. The CHAIRMAN. These amounts reduced to tons vary from 525 to 900 tons? Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know whether the Turks use opium like the people of India, Persia, and China?

Doctor LAMBERT. It is claimed they do, from what I have been able to read. The CHAIRMAN. But any figures you have given merely show the exports from those three countries without regard to domestic use?

Doctor LAMBERT. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. As to Persia, you state that the Statesmen's Yearbook for 1922, page 1193, shows exports of opium from Persia in thousands of krans. Doctor LAMBERT. That word "kran " is a coin value-not a measure of weight.

The CHAIRMAN. I have reduced that to tons, and it shows in 1918 there were 571 tons exported, and in 1919 there were 483 tons.

Doctor LAMBERT. There were about 500,000 pounds and 600,000 pounds exported in those years from Persia. That would be about 300 tons.

The CHAIRMAN. These figures that you gave me show 571 tons in 1918 and 483 tons in 1919.

Doctor LAMBERT. The kran is a coin. That is value, and the pound is the English pound sterling, not avoirdupois. About 600,000 pounds were exported from Persia, and their weight measure is the batman, which is given as five and a quarter pounds.

The CHAIRMAN. As to India, you said that India exported in 1918 a total of 1,524,500 pounds, and in 1919 it was 916,600 pounds. Reduced to tons that same objection would arise?

Doctor LAMBERT. No; that is the avoirdupois pound.

The CHAIRMAN. Then reduced to tons that would be 767 tons in 1918 and 458 tons in 1919.

Mr. SABATH. Was there a reduction in 1919?

The CHAIRMAN. The result of the war and also the exclusion of opium by China.

Doctor LAMBERT. Here is the official publication of the British, by G. Graham Dixon, published by the industries and overseas department India office of the British Government, showing 14,828 chests of 140 pounds each, or 2,075,920 pounds, exported in 1918 and 10,509 chests of provision opium exported in 1919 and 1920, which is 1,471,260 pounds. India produced at the same time the excise opium, which is opium she keeps in the country. There were produced in 1918, 8,567 chests of excise opium, or 1,067,167 pounds, and 8,512 chests in 1919 and 1920, each chest containing 123 pounds, which is 1,050,401 pounds. Added together you get for 1918, 3,143,088 pounds and 2,521,661 pounds in 1919 and 1920 produced by India.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean by provisional opium, opium exported by India? Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Excise opium is that retained in India for home consumption.

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes; and that is purely home consumption, which the last 10 years has varied 8,600 in 1913-14 down to 7,480 in 1919-20. That is a steady consumption of about seven and a half to eight thousand chests each year, each chest containing 123 pounds.

The CHAIRMAN..Then, to be strictly correct as to the amount of opium produced, excluding China, we should take the 1,500 tons, referred to in the resolution, export opium, and add to that the amount raised in India, Persia, and Turkey for home consumption.

Doctor LAMBERT, Yes.

Mr. COOPER. That opium that is manufactured, exported in India-is that by corporations?

Doctor LAMBERT. No; by the Government. auction in Calcutta.

The Government sells that at

Mr. COOPER. Does it sell it indiscriminately to purchasers, the highest bidder? Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

Mr. COOPER. Then it is the direct interest for people who are interested in the sale of these habit-forming drugs, dangerous drugs, to buy more than anybody else will buy, and the East Indian Government sells to those people? Doctor LAMBERT. Presumably.

The CHAIRMAN. You have furnished the committee very interesting and very important facts in this statement of acreage in India under cultivation for opium. The acreage in 1918-19 was 206,733 acres; in 1919-20 it was 181,787 acres. What is your authority for that statement?

Doctor LAMBERT. It is an official publication.

The CHAIRMAN. Of the English Government?

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes. It was copied from the statistical abstract for British India, 1922.

The CHAIRMAN. Following out Mr. Cooper's question, do you know of the British opium monopoly?

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. That over a century in India. Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

organization has controlled opium production for Is that correct?

It is a governmental monopoly. The Government loans money without interest to farmers who cultivate the poppy. They spend a certain amount of money which they loan out to the farmer to raise his crop, and the farmer must give the Government all the opium raised. They take it, prepare it, and sell it.

The CHAIRMAN. At the price fixed by the Government?
Doctor LAMBERT. Presumably.

The CHAIRMAN. The point I wanted to find out was whether or not the British opium monopoly or the Indian Government owns the land on which the poppies are raised.

Doctor LAMBERT. NO.

The CHAIRMAN. It is owned by individuals?

Doctor LAMBERT. Individually. There is a certain amount of opium coming from the native States called Benares opium.

Mr. TEMPLE. The Benares opium is about one-third.

Doctor LAMBERT. Benares is included in the Indian opium.

Mr. TEMPLE. The export opium, the excise opium, and the Benares to be added to the other two.

Doctor LAMBERT. Benares opium is the opium raised in those States still under the government of the native Indian princes.

Mr. TEMPLE. And it would be included in the other two?

Doctor LAMBERT. It is included. It must come through British control, therefore is entirely under the control of the Government, to the Ghazipur factory.

The CHAIRMAN. At the Ghazipur factory they submit it to a boiling process and fermentation?

Doctor LAMBERT. Not fermentation, but they boil it down în a kettle to make smoking opium.

The CHAIRMAN. What do they call that smoking opium?

Doctor LAMBERT. Prepared opium.

The CHAIRMAN. Are these public sales of opium held in any other cities than Calcutta?

Doctor LAMBERT. I think not. I think they may be held at Ghazipur.

The CHAIRMAN. How often are they held?

Doctor LAMBERT. About once a month.

The CHAIRMAN. Since the Hague Convention many of the nations of the world have passed most drastic antinarcotic laws providing, among other things, that you can not buy any opium except on a physician's prescription, not even the dose you mention of one-sixth of a grain. But that same person, a citizen of the United States, of Great Britain, of France, of Japan, can go to Calcutta when sales are being held and buy any amount he wants up to hundreds of tons. Doctor LAMBERT. Yes; there is no restriction there as to whom they sell it. The CHAIRMAN. Coming back to the matter of the exclusion of opium by China, up to the time that China started the crusade of 1907 against narcotic products, opium was universally used in China. They did not use any morphine?

Doctor LAMBERT. They are opium smokers or eaters.

The CHAIRMAN. As stated a little while ago, since 1914-15 great quantities of morphia have been shipped into China.

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

Mr. ACKERMAN. What was it shipped in for-use by hypodermics? Doctor LAMBERT. Shipped in for use instead of opium. They find that morphine is more powerful than opium, can be shipped in very small bulk, and they ship it in and the people use morphine instead of opium.

Mr. ACKERMAN. For the same purpose?

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes. That is why China made such a struggle to obtain control of her post offices, because the foreign post offices permitted shipping of the morphine.

Mr. COOPER. That is the reason we took that out. That is one of the great civilizing processes to which the East Indians and the Chinese objected. These corporations sell for money.

The CHAIRMAN. Prior to the war they were unable to extract morphine in Indian from Indian opium, but within the last couple of years they have succeeded in extracting it by a process of refrigeration. Are you familiar with that fact?

Doctor LAMBERT. No. Most of the opium coming into the United States comes from Persia or Turkey, because it is against the law to import any opium that contains less than 9 per cent of morphia.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, assuming the law is obeyed.

Doctor LAMBERT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. The opium from Persia and Turkey is shipped to other countries, where the morphine is extracted that is illicitly brought into the United States.

Doctor LAMBERT. Before the Miller Act morphine could come in legally.
The CHAIRMAN. It can not come in now?

Doctor LAMBERT. NO.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you you know that the Japanese have recently constructed a plant for the extraction of morphine on the island of Formosa? Doctor LAMBERT. It is so stated.

The CHAIRMAN. May I say to the committee at this point that during my somewhat lengthy investigation of this matter I had the assistance of Mrs. Hamilton Wright, the widow of Hamilton Wright, who represented the United States Government at the Shanghai conference of 1909. He was there as the representative of Mr. Roosevelt. I have also had the assistance of Mrs. Ellen La Motte, one of the ablest writers on the subject, and I have also secured information on the matter of production from various other sources. I have reached the conclusion that the doctor's figures here are substantially correct, as nearly accurate as possible to make them, namely, that the production of