Steinfeldt

The plaintiff in error was convicted under an indictment which charged him with receiving and concealing opium prepared for smoking purposes, knowing the same to have been imported into the United States contrary to law; the indictment having been brought under the last portion of section 2 of the Act of February 9,1909 (35 Stats, at Large, 614, c. 100 [Comp. St. 1913, § 8801]). The plaintiff in error admits that the first portion of the section, which prohibits the importation of opium into the United States, is constitutional, but denies the constitutionality of the portion thereof under which he was indicted and convicted, and he contends, in effect, that the point at which opium unlawfully imported into the United States is transferred to the possession of another, is the disappearing point of the authority of the United States over the same, and that at that point the opium loses its identity as an article of foreign commerce, and becomes mixed with the taxable property of the state, and becomes subject to the police power of the state to regulate the public health, morals, and social welfare of the citizens of the state, and is no longer subject to federal authority.

The…