或る価格破壊の話 - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

The Badlands: Decadent Playground of Old Peking (Penguin Specials) (English Edition)

作者: Paul French
出版社/メーカー: Penguin
発売日: 2013/04/11
メディア: Kindle版
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1937年に日本軍が北平（北京）を占領すると、大量のドラッグを流通させたため、価格破壊が起こり、（北京にいた）売人どもは商売があがったりになってしまった。ジャンキーたちは大喜びだったかもしれないけれど。
Paul French The Badlands: Decadent Playground of Old Peking*1からメモ。

(…) When the Japanese had occupied Peking in July of that year*2 they'd accelerated their strategy of flooding the city with narcotics in order to weaken Chinese resistance. More dope than ever was shipped in for sale in the city, now without any controls, and one the market was saturated, prices tumbled and addicts became legion. The Japanese military sat back and watched their plan working. High-grade opium was brought in from Iran; heroin and morphine came by train from factories in Korea, via Japanese-occupied Manchuria.
Within six months of taking Peking, the Japanese military had a hundred authorised drug shops up and running, and three hundred opium dens 'licensed' to sell Iranian opium at a discount. Tokyo was effectively subsidising drug addiction in China. Prices had soared in early 1937, after the Peking police tried to crack down and began arresting addicts and dealers and closing dens, and then they plummeted a year later as the market was flooded. Come late 1938, narcotics were so cheap and plentiful and addicts so common that pawnshops across Peking were encouraging their customers to take drugs rather than money for their goods; the proprietors rented syringes on the spot. (pp.31-32)

日本の中国大陸における阿片政策に関しては、江口圭一編『証言・日中アヘン戦争』（岩波ブックレット）は持っているが、岩波新書の『日中アヘン戦争』は読んでいないのだった。