If you wanted to smoke some opium, plenty of smoking parlours were available.
If you didn't feel like lying down on dirty mats and smoking...
...you could buy the amount you wanted at the Government set price...
...and go off to smoke at home, for example.
At least, it wasn't profitable for the underground opium traders...
...to try and compete with them, because the Japanese were selling it...
...at a much cheaper price than the grey marketeers.
Therefore none of the opium users were willing to pay triple price for the same product.
No one was forcing you to smoke opium, but it had been freely available.
It was possible to enter a Japanese drugstore, especially if you could speak Japanese.
You could ask for some heroin, for example. In those times it wasn't diluted in alcohol...
...but was rolled up in cigarettes together with tobacco and smoked.
I have witnessed this procedure.
There wasn't any secrecy around it either. It was sold at a Government set price.