Poppy Profits

The reason for Japan's invasion of China is that Japan wants not only all of China's raw materials but all of her markets. One of the things that China produces is opium poppies. One of the things China buys is narcotics which are made from opium poppies. This is accepted as an ideal situation by the Japanese, who have made an enormous profit briskly boosting both ends of the dope trade.

According to a report given last summer to the League of Nations Committee on Traffic in Opium, Japan's main supply of opium, which she sold under Japanese Army supervision to the Chinese, was imported from Iran (TIME, June 27). That report is now out of date. The bustling Japanese now produce most of China's narcotics in Japanese factories in Manchukuo, route the supply down from Dairen to Shanghai and Nanking.

Latest word on Japan's profitable dope traffic came last week from Dr. Miner Searle Bates, vice president of the U. S.-supported University of Nanking. Laying before the foreign press at Shanghai observations he had personally made, Dr. Bates declared:

>In Nanking 50,000 persons, one-eighth of the population, are being slowly poisoned by heroin (an opium product) sold by Japanese-directed rings.

>At least 5,000,000 Chinese dollars are made every month in the Nanking area by dealers belonging to or allied with the Japanese Army. Out of this, Japan's puppet Chinese "Reformed" Government gets a sizable cut.

>Japanese and Korean prostitutes "attached" to the Japanese Army fortnight ago brought into Nanking 80 cases of opium.

>Japanese agents three weeks ago delivered 400 cases of Iranian opium to Nanking's Opium Suppression Bureau, which ostensibly was set up to curb the traffic but which actually distributes opium through its own sales agencies.

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