VIZAGAPATAM.
usual opium duty so that the agency people might be able to have their daily dose without paying very much extra for it. This was agreed to, and from April 1881 opium of varying qualities was supplied by Government to licensed retailers, who sold it to the public at prices ranging from 5 to 3½ tolas per rupee, against the rate of two tolas which obtained in the low country. In 1882 the minimum price was raised to four tolas, and in 1883 to 3½ tolas, and this latter figure enabled Government to charge the usual duty in full and to hand over the whole business of supply to a monopolist from April 1884. Later on, the price was enhanced to three tolas, and in 1888-89, at Mr. H. G. Turner's suggestion, it was increased to 2½ tolas in all parts of the Agency except Malkanagiri taluk and the Golgonda and Mádgole hills. Mr. Turner was strongly of opinion that the opium habit was doing great harm among the Telugu hill folk in the south of the Agency; and he contrasted their physical condition and energy most unfavourably with those of the Uriyas further north, who are much less addicted to the drug. He did not believe that opium was in the least necessary to health, but held that on the contrary the people spent upon it money which would have been better laid out on food or warm clothes. He pointed out that opium-eaters required continually increasing doses as they got on in years, and that the habit was so universal that nursing mothers even rubbed the drug on their nipples before giving their babies the breast.
Two years later the price in the three excepted tracts above mentioned was raised, at Mr. Willock's suggestion, to the rate obtaining elsewhere in the Agency, namely, 2½ tolas per rupee; and in 1904 the rate throughout the district was enhanced to its present figure, 2½ tolas.
Retail supply is effected through vendors, who are granted licenses free in shops where the total annual sales are less than 1,000 tolas; pay Rs. 15 and Rs. 30 respectively if the sales are between 1,000 and 2,000 tolas and 2,000 and 3,000 tolas; and purchase the license by auction, subject to a minimum of Rs. 40, where the sales are more than 4,000 tolas annually. The consumption is greater than in any district except Gódávari, and the incidence of revenue per head of the population higher than anywhere except that district, the Nilgiris and Kistna.
In the Agency, the cultivation of the hemp plant is under no restrictions, but assertions on the part of officers of the Central Provinces that ganja was smuggled thither from the Jeypore zamindari, especially from the neighbourhood of Maidalpur, have
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