Drug Smuggling and Taking in India and Burma

by Roy K. Anderson

Everybody is a smuggler at heart!

Our innate free-trade instincts and love of liberty revolt against what we look upon as uncalled for interference with our rights when we are called upon to declare and pay duty on a box of cigars or a bottle of whisky when we disembark at a Customs port; and we look upon evasions of these obligations, not as evidences of moral obliquity, but as a very proper exercise of the exemption which we claim as our right. On the whole, this point of view is to be sympathized with, and in the case of such innocuous articles as laces, scent, and feathers, it is to be excused; the mysteries of the revenue law, and the underlying principles of taxation, are unfamiliar to most of us. But a greater degree of culpability must be attached to those who seek to evade the law by the illicit importation of articles whose unrestricted use produces nothing but harm; and while the former class of delicts may be classed as mere revenue offences, the latter must be treated as crimes and severely punished as such.

It is in the nature of things that articles which have come to be looked upon as necessaries of life, such as tea, tobacco, wine and spirits, should be taxed moderately; and indeed, were any attempt made to render them less easily obtained by raising the taxes on them, unless this course was vital in the interests of the country, there would be just reasons for profound popular dissatisfaction and disgust; but in the matter of noxious intoxicating drugs the case is reversed, and authoritative opinion inclines to the highest taxation, or even to total prohibition. Opium is taxed to a point little short of prohibition; morphia and cocaine are entirely prohibited to the public except for medical purposes; and hemp drugs are highly taxed in India, and totally prohibited in Burma. Those who quarrel with this state of things are such as have become habituated to these drugs, and of this class there is, unhappily, a large number, so large a number indeed, that their demand for a regular and sufficient supply constitutes a rich market, a market which is supplied by the smuggler who reaps abundant profits.

As in the case of other articles of commerce—and smuggling is as much a branch of commerce as the traffic in rice or jute—the scarcity or abundance of supply of drugs is what regulates their price in the illicit market. Normally, opium is sold from Government Opium Shops at from Rs. 100 to Rs. 123 a seer. Illicitly, it costs from Rs. 200 to Rs. 300 a seer, and when scarce, from Rs. 350 to Rs. 400 a seer. Illicitly, cocaine and morphia are sold at from five to six times the chemist’s price. It is true that the smuggler has to pay and maintain a large staff of assistants, and has to bear other heavy expenses, but the net profit he eventually gets is a very substantial one.

It is impossible to entirely prevent smuggling: the interested motives of mankind will always prompt them to attempt it. All that the Government can do is to compromise with an offence which, whatever the criminal law on the subject may say, appears to the mind of the smuggler, and of the drug habitué he supplies, as not at all equalling in turpitude those acts which are clear breaches of the elementary principles of ethics.

To the generality of people the smuggler is a bold, bad man with a fierce, heavily-whiskered face, and armed to the teeth with knives, pistols, and other lethal accoutrements. His surroundings are a rugged cliff, with a roaring surf at its feet; while a dimly lit cave, stocked with barrels of spirit and bales of tobacco, completes the mental picture. In reality the smuggler—the Indian smuggler at any rate—is nothing of the sort. To all appearances he is a respectable, well-to-do, easy-going merchant with a flourishing business in piece-goods, rice, or timber. But he is a thorough-paced smuggler for all that, and his business is merely a blind to his real occupation which is the importation and traffic in opium, cocaine, morphia, and hemp-drugs. It is this business which is the real source of his wealth; it is his mind that directs and accomplishes great ventures in smuggling.

To be successful as a smuggler, a man needs to have more than ordinary ability. His powers of organization, and the ability to rapidly appreciate a situation, must be of the first order, and in addition, he must be endowed with an unusually large measure of low cunning and deceit. It is true that the smuggler’s plans sometimes miscarry, but this is usually owing to treachery on the part of one of his assistants. The possibility of such treachery exemplifies the need the smuggler has for a strong personality and ability to judge character, and appraise men at their true worth; its infrequency testifies to the possession by smugglers of these qualities in an unusual degree.

It must not be supposed that the smuggler takes a very active part in his nefarious traffic; it is doubtful whether he ever sees the drugs for the importation of which he is responsible. His assistants look to all minor details, he only supplying the necessary money, and directing operations as a general directs an army in the field. His host of underlings realise only too well how relentless would be the fate that would overtake them were they to “give away” their employer, for those who have proved faithless to their trust have not survived long enough to enjoy the fruits of their perfidy! The faithful ones know they have nothing to lose or fear. Fines are paid by their employer, and jail has no terrors for them, because their families are provided for by the smuggler while they are away, and they return to their employment and the society of their companions after release from a course of hard, healthful, muscle-forming labour.

So far I have dealt exclusively with the man who smuggles in a large and extended way. He might be likened to the big importer of ordinary business. But, as in ordinary business, there are the retailers: those who take the goods to the consumer. These men operate up-country, in the sense that they work in the interior of the country. They may be agents of the big men, or they may be merely his customers; but except that their activities are confined, sometimes within the limits of a single district, they are otherwise similar to the big men who live in the cities. More often than not these men take an active and personal part in disseminating drugs, and consequently coming frequently into contact with the authorities, are more often brought to book for their misdemeanours. But they do not have much at stake, and rarely risk more than they can afford to lose if plans go wrong. Of course, there are these men in big cities also; as a matter of fact there are a host of them in every big city. To the square mile, there are many more consumers in a city than in the interior, and as the big smuggler cannot be troubled with retailing minute quantities of drugs, there is plenty to do for the lesser lights.