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Opium
- a drug that induces euphoria, banishes pain and stimulates creativity
- is also a one-way ticket to slavish dependency. Its long, bizarre and
shocking history began in ancient times in the Middle East, India and
China; by the 1870s, opium was an ingredient in many popular patent
medicines touted as cures for every ill. At the same time, the vice of
smoking opium was regarded as an embodiment of the romantic East,
embraced with interest by writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar
Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Graham Greene, and Jean Cocteau.
6,000 year old Sumerian texts refer to the opium poppy as the 'joy
plant'. It is thought Arab traders took opium to China in about the 7th
or 8th century A.D. where it was used as a medicine until about the 17th
century where it was realized it could be smoked. In later years the Portuguese
and later the British were supplying China with most of its opium,
making Britain (and mainly a company called the East India Company) the
world's largest dealer. It was sold in India to be smuggled into China,
making it entirely legal from the British side. The Chinese government
took to destroying British opium imports before they reached China which
eventually sparked two short wars and in the treaties that followed
Britain was given Hong Kong, extra trading rights and sixty million
pounds in compensation for lost opium stocks
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