Opium

1924 · rif. 178121 — Singapore.: J. E. Tyler Government Printer. 1924. 74 122 ix 324pp. Text divided into 3 parts. A. Part I. Includes a report list of attendances and minutes of the British Malaya Opium Committee. Material covered inlcudes many aspects of opium use eg origin consumption retail sale of prepared opium by the government registration of users the Chinese community in British Malaya and the anti-opium movement education as the means of eradicating the habit. The section concludes with a 24 point summary by the committee which sat on 23 occasions between November 1923 and February 1924. B. Part II consists of 77 appendices including opium statistics; statistics of consumers of prepared opium of opium shops dross returns and miscellaneous official and unofficial correspondence and memoranda relating to opium consumption. C. Part III deals in detail with the evidence given by witnesses before the committee and lists their names and occupations. Dark blue cloth covered boards lettered in gilt on the spine very lightly marked original blue wrappers bound in. A sound and clean copy of a fascinating and important report. Amongst the most peculiar aspects of British colonial rule of Malaya was the opium trade where in the late 19th and early 20th centuries revenue raised formed a major part of colonial government budgets Bailey & Truong 2001. In the early 1920s revenues derived from the government opium monopoly together with import duties on alcohol and tobacco were the three largest components of the colony's revenues of the Straits Settlement and remained as major sources of revenue until the end of the 1930s. By the beginning of the 20th century the problem of opium addiction in British Malaya particularly among the Chinese community had become a major concern. Under mounting pressure from the Chinese community leaders an Opium Commission was set up in 1907 to investigate the problem and this resulted in the abolition of opium tax farms in 1912 and the subsequent loss of a major source of revenue for the colonial government Turnbull 1989; Sugimoto 2002. In order to address this major loss of revenue the British colonial administration attempted to introduce income tax in the Straits Settlements.' Ern Chen Loo and Margaret McKerchar The Impact of British Colonial Rule on the Malaysian Income Tax System in eJournal of Tax Research 2014 vol. 12 No. 1. . J. E. Tyler Government Printer. hardcover