Where do the narcotics come from? Harry J. Anslinger, United States Commissioner of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962, had been telling the world for at least a decade that Red China was the chief source of supply. Anslinger said the Chinese Communists were up to their necks in the traffic because it brought them the foreign exchange they desperately needed and simultaneously undermined the morale of the West by spreading drug addiction among its people.
Not one official in the British crown colony accepted Mr. Anslinger’s thesis for a minute. Hong Kong Police Commissioner Henry W. E. Heath, the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, and the Preventive Service of the Commerce and Industry Department unanimously declared that there was absolutely no evidence that any large amount of the drugs smuggled into the colony came from Red China. American customs officials in Hong Kong were inclined to sustain the British view.
Anslinger had named Yunnan Province in southwestern China as the leading opium-growing area. Colony officials will concede that some opium may be grown in Yunnan, but they believe that a much greater share is cultivated in northwest Laos, northern Thailand and the Shan States of eastern Burma. These four areas are so close to one another that the difference between the two hypotheses is more political than geographic.
Regardless of which field the poppy comes from, colony officials have found that more than half the opium seized upon entering Hong Kong has arrived on ships and planes that made their last previous stop at Bangkok, Thailand. It is presumed that few drugs arrived bearing the name and address of the manufacturer or the stamp giving the country of origin.
In 1960, the colony’s antinarcotics units set what they believe to be a world record for drug seizures, grabbing 39 shipments that included 3,626 pounds of opium, 153 pounds of morphine, 337 pounds of morphine hydrochloride, 5 pounds of heroin and 155 pounds of barbitone. On November 30, 1960, the Preventive Service captured 1,078 pounds of raw opium hidden in bundles of hollowed-out teakwood on a newly arrived ship. Less than two weeks later they discovered another vessel trying the same trick and made a haul of 769 pounds of raw opium, 16 pounds of prepared opium, 45½ pounds of morphine and 293 pounds of morphine hydrochloride. There were 50 seizures in 1961, putting a further serious crimp in the smuggling racket.
Feeling persecuted and hurt, many smugglers shifted their base of operations to Singapore. Even so, it was not an unqualified triumph for Hong Kong’s antinarcotics force; by pinching off the drug supply they forced its market price sky-high, and desperate addicts began stealing and robbing to pay for their dope.
Halting the manufacture of heroin within the colony is as difficult as catching dope smugglers. A heroin “factory” requires little space and can be set up in some obscure corner of the New Territories or lodged in an expensive top-floor apartment on Hong Kong Island; the profit margin is so great that production costs are but a small obstacle. Enforcement costs are almost as steep. In 1959, the Preventive Service trebled its manpower. In February, 1961, maximum penalties for drug manufacturing were raised from a fine of $8,750 and ten years in prison to a $17,500 fine and life imprisonment.
Almost two-thirds of all prisoners in Hong Kong jails are drug addicts, but the jailing of addicts, however necessary to protect society, offers no cure for addiction. The colony government has sought to meet this phase of the problem by setting up a narcotics rehabilitation center at Tai Lam Chung Prison and a voluntary treatment section in the government hospital at Castle Peak.
Dr. Alberto M. Rodrigues, a colony-born physician of Portuguese ancestry and an unofficial member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, became chairman of a voluntary committee formed in 1959 to help drug addicts. With government approval, his committee took over Shek Kwu Island near Lantau in 1960 to establish a center where about 500 addicts could be accommodated if they volunteered for treatment. The island was chosen because it was isolated, and with proper security measures, could keep the addict entirely away from drugs until medical and nursing care had put him back on his feet. Gus Borgeest, the refugee rehabilitation pioneer who established a welfare center on Sunshine Island, helped in the early planning of Shek Kwu Chau, which began operations during 1962.