Synthetic

If it were unprofitable to grow opium poppies, few would be grown. The opium question is solved: let chemists discover how to make synthetic opium and how to make it more cheaply than the poppy product.

Such was the millennialistic idea put forward, last week, by Dr. Carleton Simon, Special Deputy Police Commissioner of New York City. It struck Special Deputy Police Commissioner Herman A. Metz as such a good idea that he promptly offered a prize of $100,000 for discovery of the synthetic formula.

In such matters, Mr. Metz is something more than a mere layman. He owns many chemical factories. But laboratory scientists were slow in getting to work. Said Columbia Professor of Chemistry Bogert: "Mr. Metz has risked little by his offer. . . . The making of a synthetic opium that will have all the medicinal qualities, or the good qualities, and be shy of the narcotic, or bad qualities, is something that I do not believe will be done-at least for a very long time."

But Mr. Metz' main objective would seem to be achieved if a synthetic opium having narcotic qualities were discovered. Such a formula could be controlled by the Government and would serve to destroy the vested poppy interests, as synthetic dyes replaced indigo growing.