Tonga's new tobacco was almost a riot

Saia Kava, who lives on the Tonga island of Nomukaiki, in the Haapai Group, last year re ceived from Singapore some seeds of a new type of tobacco. They were mailed to him by an Ameri can visitor he had met in Tonga.

Tongans have grown and cured their own tobacco for more than a century and Saia was pleased when the seeds flourished in an ideal climate.

Last November Tonga’s Minister for Police, accompanied by the Director of the Peace Corps, travelled to Tonga’s northern islands on a hush hush mission which nobody suspected had anything to do with Saia Kava’s tobacco. But it did, and in February there were even more important developments following the return from his military graduation at Sandhurst of Crown Prince Tupotoa.

Tupotoa was told all about this new tobacco and discussed it with his father, King Taufa’ahau. As a result of this discussion the Crown Prince sent a clearly worded message to the village leaders of his royal estates on the island of Nomuka, Haapai, re questing them to search for, and destroy, all traces of the new tobacco plant.

Then on February 17, the land ing craft Kao set off with a combined force of 100 police and Army personnel, accompanied by the Prince. The party made a dawn landing on Nomukaiki, un covering four tobacco plants and nearly 100 seeds. Seed in large quantities was also found at Nomuka and Tekivavau, and some on the smaller atolls of Tonumea and Kelefesia.

They made no arrests, but questioning brought out the fact

that traffic in the tobacco had spread to the Vavau group in the north and the main island of Tongatapu in the south. And furthermore, that it was generally known locally what the Crown Prince, the police and the Police Corps chief knew—that is, that Tonga’s new tobacco was the drug marijuana.

To what extent the Tongans have used it, or traded in it, nobody seems to know. But the citizens of Tonga have now been warned that conviction for possession of the new tobacco in any form carries a penalty of 10 years’ gaol or a fine of $T2,000.

And in Nukualofa they are saying that the American tourist who introduced the new tobacco, and who, they say, expected to return to Haapai by yacht at a later date, is in trouble in one of the Scandinavian countries on another matter—and serve him right.