The drug opium is derived from the opium poppy, produced chiefly in China, India, Iran, Turkey, Russia and the Balkan countries.

Most of the opium produced is used illicitly as an intoxicant. It produces pleasant dreams, profound sleep, and, in sufficiently large doses, can cause death. Antidotes for opium are strong tea and other stimulants, and sharp electrical shocks. The legitimate demand for opium amounts to about 800 tons a year, but about six times that amount is distributed illegally. Mor-phine and codeine are derived from opium.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on November 7, 1898 that police raided a Chinese opium den at 174 Fulton St. Forty-two Chinese men and a full fan-tan [Chinese gambling game] outfit were arrested.

Fifty-nine years previously, the Opium War between England and China began. In the mid-1800s the East India Company of England was suffering an adverse balance of trade with China. A quick fix would be to pour illegal opium into China. When the Chinese imperial commissioner, Lin Tze-su, ordered all British opium destroyed, England declared war on November 3, 1839.

In 1842, China surrendered after British gunboats smashed Chinese fortifications. In the surrender China was forced to give up Hong Kong (meaning “sweet stream�) to the British and pay a $21 million indemnity. And the British continued to pour opium into China.

In 1900 the Chinese tried to get their revenge, and were humiliated. The Boxers (actual name Righteousness and Harmony Society, and having nothing to do with boxing), a secret organization of 40,000 patriotic militants, tried to throw foreigners out of their country.

England, U.S., Germany, Russia, France, Japan sent in 16,000 troops to put down the Boxer Rebellion, and succeeded. The Chinese had to pay an indemnity running into millions of dollars. The U.S. returned about $12 million, half of its indemnity. In the peace terms, China had to give Hong Kong up to the British, and had to allow foreign nations to establish legation quarters and troops in Peking.

It was not until six decades later that China did get even. In 1965, Premier Chou En-lai, of the People’s Republic of China, speaking to President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, explained one reason for the demoralization of American troops in South Vietnam:

“Some of them are trying opium, and we are helping them. We are planting the best kinds of opium especially for the American soldiers in Vietnam … Do you remember when the West imposed opium on us? They fought us with opium. And we are going to fight them with their own weapons.�

— Vernon Parker

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