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.