imported, manufactured, and placed upon the general market in such forms as to be available to anyone who desires them or who desires to trade on the addiction of his fellow creatures to them. Quite apart from the general evidence in this regard, there is abundant definite and particular evidence to the same effect now before the Congress. This may be seen by reference to the Report on the Opium Problem in the United States and on the International Opium Commission transmitted by the President to the Congress on February 21, 1910, and ordered to be printed (S. Doc. No. 377, 61st Cong., 2d sess.).

That report analyzes in a very particular manner the immense increase in the importation of opium and coca leaves during the last 25 years, their manufacture into morphine and cocaine, and the spread and consumption of these drugs amongst all classes of the community.

The gist of that report is that Italy, with a population of about 33,000,000, imports and consumes only six thousand and odd pounds of medicinal opium per annum; that Spain, with a population of 19,000,000, imports and uses so little that it is not separately entered in customs or other returns; that Austria-Hungary, with a population of 46,000,000, imports and consumes between three and four thousand pounds per annum; that Germany, with a population of about 60,000,000, imports about 17,000 pounds for home consumption; and that Holland, with a population of about 6,000,000, uses about 3,000 pounds per annum; that is, these five European countries, with a total population of about 164,000,000, import and consume less than 50,000 pounds of opium annually; while the United States, with a population of 90,000,000, imports and consumes over 400,000 pounds of opium per annum.

In these European countries there is but a small importation of coca leaves and manufacture of cocaine for home consumption.

It has been claimed that the importation of opium and morphine into the United States during the last 50 years has not been excessive, but has simply grown pari passu with the increase in population. But this is not so. Our total population in 1870 was about 38,000,000, and in 1909 about 90,000,000, showing an increase in population from 1870-1909 of 133 per cent. The importation of opium during the decade of 1860-1869 was 1,425,196 pounds, as against an importation of 6,435,623 pounds for the decade 1900-1909-an increase of 351 per cent. This has not taken into account opium smuggled during this period-a so common practice at one time. Thus, as against a 133 per cent increase in our total population in the five decades, there was an increase in the importation and consumption of opium of 351 per cent.

This enormous increase in the importation of and consumption of opium in the United States is startling and is directly due to the facility with which opium may be imported, manufactured into its various derivatives and preparations, and placed within the reach of the individual. There has been in this country an almost shameless traffic in these drugs. Criminal classes have been created, and the use of the drugs with much accompanying moral and economic degradation is widespread among the upper classes of society. We are an opium-consuming nation to-day.

A wide canvass of the medical profession has determined that between fifty and seventy-five thousand pounds of opium are sufficient

REGISTRATION OF PRODUCERS AND IMPORTERS OF OPIUM. 3

to satisfy the medicinal needs of the American people, and that 15,000 ounces of cocaine only are necessary. We import, manufacture, and consume over 150,000 ounces of the latter.

The different States of the Union have, by pharmacy laws, made most strenuous efforts to prevent the indiscriminate sales of narcotics-most of the States requiring that these drugs be sold only upon the prescription of physicians. But these laws have been ineffective because of the failure of the Federal Government to control the importation and interstate traffic in the drugs. It is the unanimous view of State, Territorial, and municipal officials charged with police laws aimed at the traffic in narcotics that these laws will remain ineffective to a large extent until the Federal Government acts in support of them.

It may be said that no individual has ever represented to the Committee on Ways and Means that the present extensive traffic in narcotics should be allowed to continue. The opinion of in fact every one except illicit dealers is that the traffic ought to be greatly diminished, and that narcotics should be confined to legitimate medical channels. The only question at issue has been how best to do it. During the past five years the United States Opium Commission has made a thorough canvass of importers, manufacturers, physicians, and State officials, as well as of consumers, and as a result and in conjunction with a committee of representatives of the Department of State, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Justice, it has been decided by them that only by customs law and by the exertion of the Federal taxing power can the desired end be accomplished. In that opinion your committee concur.

Approaching the question from this point of view, a series of bills has been designed. One of these is already on the statute booksthe opium-exclusion act, approved February 9, 1909—and it would now seem to need amendment, in order to secure more certain Federal control of the importation and interstate traffic in narcotics. The bill H. R. 6282 provides for that situation.

The first section of the bill requires every person who produces, imports, manufactures, compounds, deals in, dispenses, sells, distributes, or gives away any opium or coca leaves or any of their derivatives, to register their name, etc., with the collector of internal revenue of the district where they carry on their business; and also to pay a tax of $1 per annum. It further provides that it shall be unlawful for any person to do business of this nature without having registered and paid the special tax.

Section 2 provides that it shall be unlawful for any person to sell, barter, exchange, or give away any of these drugs, except in pursuance of a written order of the purchaser or person to whom such article is given on a form to be issued in blank for that purpose by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue; and requires them to keep such order for a period of two years so that it may be accessible for inspection by Federal and State officials. The purchaser who makes out this order blank must keep a duplicate. This method of duplicate order blanks, however, is expressly made not to apply to the dispensing of the drugs by a physician, dentist, or veterinary surgeon registered under this act in the course of his professional practice, provided they shall be in personal attendance upon their patient; nor to the dispensing of the drugs by a pharmacist to a consumer

upon a written prescription of a physician; nor to the exportation of drugs. The duplicate order blanks are to be prepared and sold by the Internal Revenue Department for a nominal sum, and explicit provisions made as to how the blanks shall be filled out, etc.

Section 3 provides that any person registered under this act may be required by the collector of internal revenue for his district to disclose to him his records.

Section 4 makes it unlawful for any person who shall not have registered and paid the special tax to transport any of these drugs from State to State, and in this section common carriers are excepted, as well as the written prescriptions of physicians, etc.

Section 5 makes accessible to the Federal and State officials the duplicate order forms in the files of individuals; also permits the collector of internal revenue to furnish certified copies of these returns to any State officials. It further provides that the collectors of internal revenue shall furnish upon written request to any person a certified copy of the names of any or all persons who may be listed in their respective collection districts as special taxpayers under the provisions of this act upon payment of a fee of $1 for each 100 names or fraction thereof in the copy so requested.

Section 6 exempts from the provisions of this act preparations and remedies which contain so small a proportice of narcotics as to render it impossible that they should become habit-forming drugs.

Section 7 makes applicable laws relating to the collection of internalrevenue taxes, and especially section 3229 of the Revised Statutes, permitting compromises and remission of fines by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, upon the advice of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General.

Section 8 makes it unlawful for any person not registered and who has not paid the tax to have any of these drugs in his possession and such possession the presumptive violation of the act. Exceptions are again made for drugs which have been prescribed by physicians, etc., or which are held by warehousemen or public officials or common carriers.

Section 9 is the penal section, the penalties being a $2,000 fine or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.

Section 10 authorizes the employment of the officials to put the act into effect.

Section 11 appropriates the sum of $150,000 to carry the act into effect.

Section 12 makes clear that nothing in this act is to interfere with the pure-food law and with the opium-exclusion act.

JUNE 24, 1913.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed.

Mr. HARRISON of New York, from the Committee on Ways and Means, submitted the following

REPORT.

[To accompany H. R. 1966.]

The Committee on Ways and Means, to whom was referred H. R. 1966, having had it under consideration, report it back to the House with an amendment as follows:

On page 6, line 3, after the word "penalty," insert the words "and forfeiture," and strike out, in lines 4, 5, and 6 of the same page, the words "and may be subject to seizure and forfeiture in default of the payment of such penalty"; and insert a period in line 4 of the same page after the word "statutes."

And as so amended the committee recommend that the bill do pass.

H. R. 1966 is a reenactment and substantial amendment of the opium-exclusion act approved February 9, 1909. That act was drafted, enacted, and approved as a first step on the part of the United States to clean its own house in view of the assemblage at Shanghai on the initiative of the United States of the International Opium Commission, composed of representatives of the United States, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Persia, Portugal, Russia, and Siam.

The original object of the United States Government in initiating the international movement for the suppression of the opium traffic was to bring to an end the deplorable habit of opium smoking, which had taken a deep hold in the Philippine Islands, and was widespread throughout the Far East, especially in China. Immediately on the appointment of the American Opium Commission, under the authority of an act of Congress, it was discovered that the United States, in calling upon the other nations of the world to join with it in suppressing this traffic, had itself since 1860 permitted the importation of opium prepared for smoking and had collected thereon an aggregate revenue of over $27,000,000.

H R-63-1-vol 1- -2

It was immediately recognized that it would not be possible for the American delegates to the international commission to press for the suppression of the far eastern opium traffic so long as the United States was a party to that traffic. Therefore, Congress passed the opium-exclusion act of 1909 and it was approved in time to permit the American delegates to the International Opium Commission to take up the strong position which this Government has maintained for five years, and which has had the general support of 12 other powers, as witnessed by the international opium conference and its convention. (See S. Doc. No. 733, 62d Cong., 2d sess.)

The opium-exclusion act became effective on April 1, 1909, and when it came to the question of its practical enforcement it was found that it was defective and that it would be necessary to amend it if opium for other than medicinal purposes is to be excluded from the United States.

The bill H. R. 1966 is designed to effect that purpose.

The bill as it stands is composed of eight sections, the first two of which are the original act and the last six the proposed amendments thereto.

Of the sections comprising the original bill nothing need be said, as they are self-explanatory, but a detailed explanation of the necessity and application of those sections amending the bill follow. 1. In regard to section 3: It provides in effect that all opium prepared for smoking found within the United States shall be presumed to have been imported after the 1st day of April, 1909, the date when the February act became effective, and that the burden of proof shall be on the claimant of any such opium, or the accused, to rebut such presumption. This amendatory section is necessary for the following reasons: The act of February, 1909 (secs. 1 and 2 of H. R. 1966), prohibits the importation of opium into the United States except for medicinal purposes, and so aims to exclude from the United States opium prepared for smoking, which is, of course, a deleterious and obnoxious article. That act became effective April 1, 1909. The importers and holders of opium prepared for smoking, on learning that the February act would shortly be passed by the Congress and approved by the President, not only reserved large stocks of this form of opium which they had on hand, but made heavy speculative importation which duly passed the customs under the conditions imposed by paragraph 43 of the so-called Dingley Tariff Act. That is, on this form of opium legally imported, an impost of $6 per pound was paid, and the containers were duly stamped. The amount of this opium in the country on April 1, 1909, was in the neighborhood of a million and a half pounds.

When the February act became effective there was a consequent rise in the value of smoking opium, with the result that an immense quantity of this form of opium has been smuggled into the country, chiefly at Pacific ports and over the Mexican border. Receptacles containing this smuggled form of opium not bearing the customs stamp are seized by agents of the Treasury Department, and the holders proceeded against. But conviction of the other holders of smuggled opium is difficult because they ingeniously remove the customs stamp from the containers of the drug legally imported before the February act became effective; then refill the containers with smuggled opium, replace the stamp, and put the smuggled