The addictive side effects of opium became apparent once its use was more popularized in China in the 18th century, after opium was mixed with tobacco and smoking opium became widespread. Opium prohibition began in 1729 in China but this did little to dampen the drug's popularity, which continued to increase for nearly 200 years. Formed in 1909 in the West, the International Opium Commission aimed at regulating the use of the popular drug. By the early 20th century, opium was prohibited in many countries.
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These rather distinguished looking folk look like they’ve come straight from the office into this Chinese-run opium den in New York City’s Chinatown. Clearly, they wanted to check out for themselves what the craze is all about.
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF OPIUM
"Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside
from physical suffering, there is nothing real."
André Malraux
MAN'S FATE
- c.3400 B.C.
The opium poppy is cultivated in lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians refer to it as Hul Gil, the 'joy plant.' The Sumerians would soon pass along the plant and its euphoric effects to the Assyrians. The art of opium poppy-culling would continue from the Assyrians to the Babylonians who in turn would pass their knowledge onto the Egyptians. - c.1300 B.C.
In the capital city of Thebes, Egyptians begin cultivation of opium thebaicum, grown in their famous poppy fields. The opium trade flourishes during the reign of Thutmose IV, Akhenaton and King Tutankhamen. The trade route included the Phoenicians and Minoans who move the profitable item across the Mediterranean Sea into Greece, Carthage, and Europe. - c.1100 B.C.
On the island of Cyprus, the "Peoples of the Sea" craft surgical-quality culling knives to harvest opium, which they would cultivate, trade and smoke before the fall of Troy. - c. 460 B.C.
Hippocrates, "the father of medicine", dismisses the magical attributes of opium but acknowledges its usefulness as a narcotic and styptic in treating internal diseases, diseases of women and epidemics. - 330 B.C.
Alexander the Great introduces opium to the people of Persia and India. - A.D. 400
Opium thebaicum, from the Egyptian fields at Thebes, is first introduced to China by Arab traders. - 1020
Avicenna of Persia teaches that opium is "the most powerful of stupefacients." - A.D. 1200
Ancient Indian medical treatises The Shodal Gadanigrah and Sharangdhar Samahita describe the use of opium for diarrohea and sexual debility. The Dhanvantri Nighantu also describes the medical properties of opium. - 1300s
Opium disappears for two hundred years from European historical record. Opium had become a taboo subject for those in circles of learning during the Holy Inquisition. In the eyes of the Inquisition, anything from the East was linked to the Devil. - 1500
The Portuguese, while trading along the East China Sea, initiate the smoking of opium. The effects were instantaneous as they discovered but it was a practice the Chinese considered barbaric and subversive. - 1527
During the height of the Reformation, opium is reintroduced into European medical literature byParacelsus as laudanum. These black pills or "Stones of Immortality" were made of opium thebaicum, citrus juice and quintessence of gold and prescribed as painkillers. - 1600s
Residents of Persia and India begin eating and drinking opium mixtures for recreational use. Portuguese merchants carrying cargoes of Indian opium through Macao direct its trade flow into China. - 1601
Ships chartered by Elizabeth I are instructed to purchase the finest Indian opium and transport it back to England. - 1620s -1670s
Rajput troops fighting for the Mughals introduce the habit of taking opium to Assam. Opium is given daily to Rajput soldiers. From 1637 onwards Opium becomes the main commodity of British trade with China. - 1680
English apothecary, Thomas Sydenham, introduces Sydenham's Laudanum, a compound of opium, sherry wine and herbs. His pills along with others of the time become popular remedies for numerous ailments. - 1700
The Dutch export shipments of Indian opium to China and the islands of Southeast Asia; the Dutch introduce the practice of smoking opium in a tobacco pipe to the Chinese. - 1729
Chinese emperor, Yung Cheng, issues an edict prohibiting the smoking of opium and its domestic sale, except under license for use as medicine. - 1750
The British East India Company assumes control of Bengal and Bihar, opium-growing districts of India. British shipping dominates the opium trade out of Calcutta to China. - 1753
Linnaeus, the father of botany, first classifies the poppy, Papaver somniferum - 'sleep-inducing', in his book Genera Plantarum. - 1767
The British East India Company's import of opium to China reaches a staggering two thousand chests of opium per year. - 1773
East India Company assumes monopoly over all the opium produced in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Warren Hastings introduces system of contracts. Contracts for dealing in opium were awarded through auction. - 1793
The British East India Company establishes a monopoly on the opium trade. All poppy growers in India were forbidden to sell opium to competitor trading companies. - 1796
The import of opium into China becomes a contraband trade. Silver was smuggled out to pay for smuggling opium in. - 1797
East India Company introduced Bengal Regulation IV to enable appointment of Opium Agents for purchase of opium from cultivators and its processing at factories owned by the company at Patna and Ghazipur - 1799
China's emperor, Kia King, bans opium completely, making trade and poppy cultivation illegal. - 1800
The British Levant Company purchases nearly half of all of the opium coming out of Smyrna,Turkey strictly for importation to Europe and the United States. - 1803
Friedrich Sertürner of Paderborn, Germany discovers the active ingredient of opium by dissolving it in acid then neutralizing it with ammonia. The result: alkaloids - Principium somniferum or morphine.Physicians believe that opium had finally been perfected and tamed. Morphine is lauded as "God's own medicine" for its reliability, long-lasting effects and safety.
- 1805
A smuggler from Boston, Massachusetts, Charles Cabot, attempts to purchase opium from the British, then smuggle it into China under the auspices of British smugglers. - 1812
American John Cushing, under the employ of his uncles' business, James and Thomas H. Perkins Company of Boston, acquires his wealth from smuggling Turkish opium to Canton. - 1816
John Jacob Astor of New York City joins the opium smuggling trade. His American Fur Company purchases ten tons of Turkish opium then ships the contraband item to Canton on the Macedonian. Astor would later leave the China opium trade and sell solely to England. - 1819
Writer John Keats and other English literary personalities experiment with opium intended for strict recreational use - simply for the high and taken at extended, non-addictive intervals - 1821
Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical account of opium addiction, Confessions of an English Opium-eater. - 1827
E. Merck & Company of Darmstadt, Germany, begins commercial manufacturing of morphine. - 1830
The British dependence on opium for medicinal and recreational use reaches an all time high as 22,000 pounds of opium is imported from Turkey and India.Jardine-Matheson & Company of London inherit India and its opium from the British East India Company once the mandate to rule and dictate the trade policies of British India are no longer in effect.
- 1837
Elizabeth Barrett Browning falls under the spell of morphine. This, however, does not impede her ability to write "poetical paragraphs." - March 18, 1839
Lin Tse-Hsu, imperial Chinese commissioner in charge of suppressing the opium traffic, orders all foreign traders to surrender their opium. In response, the British send expeditionary warships to the coast of China, beginning The First Opium War. - 1840
New Englanders bring 24,000 pounds of opium into the United States. This catches the attention of U.S. Customs which promptly puts a duty fee on the import. - 1841
The Chinese are defeated by the British in the First Opium War. Along with paying a large indemnity, Hong Kong is ceded to the British. - 1842
The Treaty of Nanking between the Queen of Great Britain and the Emperor of China. - 1843
Dr. Alexander Wood of Edinburgh discovers a new technique of administering morphine, injection with a syringe. He finds the effects of morphine on his patients instantaneous and three times more potent. - 1852
The British arrive in lower Burma, importing large quantities of opium from India and selling it through a government-controlled opium monopoly. - 1856
The British and French renew their hostilities against China in the Second Opium War. In the aftermath of the struggle, China is forced to pay another indemnity. The importation of opium is legalized.Opium production increases along the highlands of Southeast Asia.
- 1874
English researcher, C.R. Wright first synthesizes heroin, or diacetylmorphine, by boiling morphine over a stove.In San Francisco, smoking opium in the city limits is banned and is confined to neighboring Chinatowns and their opium dens.
- 1878
Britain passes the Opium Act with hopes of reducing opium consumption. Under the new regulation, the selling of opium is restricted to registered Chinese opium smokers and Indian opium eaters while the Burmese are strictly prohibited from smoking opium. - 1886
The British acquire Burma's northeast region, the Shan state. Production and smuggling of opium along the lower region of Burma thrives despite British efforts to maintain a strict monopoly on the opium trade. - 1890
U.S. Congress, in its earliest law-enforcement legislation on narcotics, imposes a tax on opium and morphine.Tabloids owned by William Randolph Hearst publish stories of white women being seduced by Chinese men and their opium to invoke fear of the 'Yellow Peril', disguised as an "anti-drug" campaign.
- 1895
Heinrich Dreser working for The Bayer Company of Elberfeld, Germany, finds that diluting morphine with acetyls produces a drug without the common morphine side effects. Bayer begins production of diacetylmorphine and coins the name "heroin." Heroin would not be introduced commercially for another three years. - Early 1900s
The philanthropic Saint James Society in the U.S. mounts a campaign to supply free samples of heroin through the mail to morphine addicts who are trying give up their habits. Efforts by the British and French to control opium production in Southeast Asia are successful. Nevertheless, this Southeast region, referred to as the 'Golden Triangle', eventually becomes a major player in the profitable opium trade during the 1940s. - 1902
In various medical journals, physicians discuss the side effects of using heroin as a morphine step-down cure. Several physicians would argue that their patients suffered from heroin withdrawal symptoms equal to morphine addiction. - 1903
Heroin addiction rises to alarming rates. - 1905
U.S. Congress bans opium. - 1906
China and England finally enact a treaty restricting the Sino-Indian opium trade. Several physicians experiment with treatments for heroin addiction. Dr. Alexander Lambert and Charles B. Towns tout their popular cure as the most "advanced, effective and compassionate cure" for heroin addiction. The cure consisted of a 7 day regimen, which included a five day purge of heroin from the addict's system with doses of belladonna delirium.U.S. Congress passes the Pure Food and Drug Act requiring contents labeling on patent medicines by pharmaceutical companies. As a result, the availability of opiates and opiate consumers significantly declines.
- 1909
The first federal drug prohibition passes in the U.S. outlawing the importation of opium. It was passed in preparation for the Shanghai Conference, at which the US presses for legislation aimed at suppressing the sale of opium to China. - February 1, 1909
The International Opium Commission convenes in Shanghai. Heading the U.S. delegation are Dr. Hamilton Wright and Episcopal Bishop Henry Brent. Both would try to convince the international delegation of the immoral and evil effects of opium. - 1910
After 150 years of failed attempts to rid the country of opium, the Chinese are finally successful in convincing the British to dismantle the India-China opium trade. - Dec. 17, 1914
The passage of Harrison Narcotics Act which aims to curb drug (especially cocaine but also heroin) abuse and addiction. It requires doctors, pharmacists and others who prescribed narcotics to register and pay a tax. - 1923
The U.S. Treasury Department's Narcotics Division (the first federal drug agency) bans all legal narcotics sales. With the prohibition of legal venues to purchase heroin, addicts are forced to buy from illegal street dealers. - 1925
In the wake of the first federal ban on opium, a thriving black market opens up in New York'sChinatown. - 1930s
The majority of illegal heroin smuggled into the U.S. comes from China and is refined in Shanghai and Tietsin. - Early 1940s
During World War II, opium trade routes are blocked and the flow of opium from India and Persia is cut off. Fearful of losing their opium monopoly, the French encourage Hmong farmers to expand their opium production. - 1945-1947
Burma gains its independence from Britain at the end of World War II. Opium cultivation and trade flourishes in the Shan states. - 1948-1972
Corsican gangsters dominate the U.S. heroin market through their connection with Mafia drug distributors. After refining the raw Turkish opium in Marseilles laboratories, the heroin is made easily available for purchase by junkies on New York City streets. - 1950s
U.S. efforts to contain the spread of Communism in Asia involves forging alliances with tribes and warlords inhabiting the areas of the Golden Triangle, (an expanse covering Laos, Thailand and Burma), thus providing accessibility and protection along the southeast border of China. In order to maintain their relationship with the warlords while continuing to fund the struggle against communism, the U.S. and France supply the drug warlords and their armies with ammunition, arms and air transport for the production and sale of opium. The result: an explosion in the availability and illegal flow of heroin into the United States and into the hands of drug dealers and addicts. - 1962
Burma outlaws opium. - 1965-1970
U.S. involvement in Vietnam is blamed for the surge in illegal heroin being smuggled into the States. To aid U.S. allies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sets up a charter airline, Air America, to transport raw opium from Burma and Laos. As well, some of the opium would be transported to Marseilles by Corsican gangsters to be refined into heroin and shipped to the U.S via the French connection. The number of heroin addicts in the U.S. reaches an estimated 750,000. - October 1970
Legendary singer, Janis Joplin, is found dead at Hollywood's Landmark Hotel, a victim of an "accidental heroin overdose." - 1972
Heroin exportation from Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle, controlled by Shan warlord, Khun Sa, becomes a major source for raw opium in the profitable drug trade.Solomon Snyder and Candace Pert discover opiate receptor in the brain.
- July 1, 1973
President Nixon creates the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) under the Justice Dept. to consolidate virtually all federal powers of drug enforcement in a single agency. - Mid-1970s
Saigon falls. The heroin epidemic subsides. The search for a new source of raw opium yields Mexico's Sierra Madre. "Mexican Mud" would temporarily replace "China White" heroin until 1978. - 1975
Hans Kosterlitz and his colleagues isolate and purify an endogenous opioid in the brain, enkephalin. - 1978
The U.S. and Mexican governments find a means to eliminate the source of raw opium - by spraying poppy fields with Agent Orange. The eradication plan is termed a success as the amount of "Mexican Mud" in the U.S. drug market declines. In response to the decrease in availability of "Mexican Mud", another source of heroin is found in the Golden Crescent area -Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, creating a dramatic upsurge in the production and trade of illegal heroin. - 1982
Comedian John Belushi of Animal House fame, dies of a heroin-cocaine - "speedball" overdose. - Sept. 13, 1984
U.S. State Department officials conclude, after more than a decade of crop substitution programs for Third World growers of marijuana, coca or opium poppies, that the tactic cannot work without eradication of the plants and criminal enforcement. Poor results are reported from eradication programs in Burma, Pakistan, Mexico and Peru. - 1988
Opium production in Burma increases under the rule of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), the Burmese junta regime.The single largest heroin seizure is made in Bangkok. The U.S. suspects that the 2,400-pound shipment of heroin, en route to New York City, originated from the Golden Triangle region, controlled by drug warlord, Khun Sa.
- 1990
A U.S. Court indicts Khun Sa, leader of the Shan United Army and reputed drug warlord, on heroin trafficking charges. The U.S. Attorney General's office charges Khun Sa with importing 3,500 pounds of heroin into New York City over the course of eighteen months, as well as holding him responsible for the source of the heroin seized in Bangkok. - 1992
Colombia's drug lords are said to be introducing a high-grade form of heroin into the United States. - 1993
The Thai army with support from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) launches its operation to destroy thousands of acres of opium poppies from the fields of the Golden Triangle region. - January 1994
Efforts to eradicate opium at its source remains unsuccessful. The Clinton Administration orders a shift in policy away from the anti- drug campaigns of previous administrations. Instead the focus includes "institution building" with the hope that by "strengthening democratic governments abroad, [it] will foster law-abiding behavior and promote legitimate economic opportunity." - 1995
The Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia is now the leader in opium production, yielding 2,500 tons annually. According to U.S. drug experts, there are new drug trafficking routes from Burma through Laos, to southern China, Cambodia and Vietnam. - January 1996
Khun Sa, one of Shan state's most powerful drug warlords, "surrenders" to SLORC. The U.S. is suspicious and fears that this agreement between the ruling junta regime and Khun Sa includes a deal allowing "the opium king" to retain control of his opium trade but in exchange end his 30-year-old revolutionary war against the government. - November 1996
International drug trafficking organizations, including China, Nigeria, Colombia and Mexico are said to be "aggressively marketing heroin in the United States and Europe." - 1999
Bumper opium crop of 4,600 tons in Afghanistan. UN Drug Control Program estimates around 75% of world's heroin production is of Afghan origin. - 2000
Taliban leader Mullah Omar bans poppy cultivation in Afghanistan; United Nations Drug Control Program confirms opium production eradicated.
- July 2001
Portugal decriminalizes all drugs for personal consumption. - Autumn 2001
War in Afghanistan; heroin floods the Pakistan market. Taleban regime overthrown. - October 2002
U.N. Drug Control and Crime Prevention Agency announces Afghanistan has regained its position as the world's largest opium producer. - December 2002
UK Government health plan will make heroin available free on National Health Service "to all those with a clinical need for it". Consumers are sceptical. - April 2003
State sponsored heroin trafficking: Korea's attempt to penetrate the Australian heroin market hits rocky waters. - October 2003
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) launch special task force to curb surge in Net-based sales of narcotics from online pharmacies. - January 2004
Consumer groups file a lawsuit against Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma. The company is alleged to have used fraudulent patents and deceptive trade practices to block the prescription of cheap generic medications for patients in pain. - September 2004
Singapore announces plans to execute a self-medicating heroin user, Chew Seow Leng. Under Singapore law, chronic heroin users with a high physiological tolerance to the drug are deemed to be "traffickers". Consumers face a mandatory death sentence if they take more than 15 grams (0.5 ounces) of heroin a day. - September 2004
A Tasmanian company publishes details of its genetically-engineered opium poppies. Top1[thebaine oripavine poppy 1] mutants do not produce morphine or codeine. Tasmania is the source of some 40% of the world's legal opiates; its native crop of poppies is already being re-engineered with the mutant stain. Conversely, some investigators expect that the development of genetically-engineered plants and microorganisms to manufacture potent psychoactive compounds will become widespread later in the 21st century. Research into transgenic psychotropic botanicals and microbes is controversial; genes from mutants have a habit of spreading into the wild population by accident as well as design. - September 2004
The FDA grants a product license to Purdue's pain medication Palladone: high dose, extended-release hydromorphone capsules. Palladone is designed to provide "around-the-clock" pain-relief for opioid-tolerant users. - October 2004
Unannounced withdrawal of newly-issued DEA guidelines to pain specialists. The guidelines had pledged that physicians wouldn't be arrested for providing adequate pain-relief to their patients. DEA drug-diversion chief Patricia Good earlier stated that the new rules were meant to eliminate an "aura of fear" that stopped doctors treating pain aggressively. - December 2004
McLean pain-treatment specialist Dr William E. Hurwitz is sent to prison for allegedly "excessive" prescription of opioid painkillers to chronic pain patients. Testifying in court, Dr Hurwitz describes the abrupt stoppage of prescriptions as "tantamount to torture". - May 2005
Researchers at Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center in Emeryville, California, inhibit expression of the AGS3 gene in the core of nucleus accumbens. Experimentally blocking the AGS3 gene curbs the desire for heroin in addicted rodents. By contrast, activation of the reward centres of the nucleus accumbens is immensely pleasurable and addictive. The possible effects of overexpression and gene amplification of AGS3 remain unexplored. - December 2005
Neuroscientists close in on the (hypothetical) final common pathway of pleasure in the brain. The "hedonic hotspot" is activated by agonists of the mu opioid receptor. In rats, at least, the hedonic hotspot is located in a single cubic millimeter of tissue: the substrates of pure bliss may lie in medium spiny neurons in the rostrodorsal region of the medial shell of the nucleus accumbens. - May 2006
In Mexico, Congress passes a bill legalising the private personal use of all drugs, including opium and all opiate-based drugs. President Vicente Fox promises to to sign the measure, but buckles a day later under US government pressure. The bill is referred back to Congress for changes. "We welcome the idea of Mexico reviewing the legislation to avoid the perception that drug use would be tolerated in Mexico," says the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. - June 2006
University of Southern California neuroscientist Irving Biederman publishes in the American Scientist a theory of knowledge-acquisition likening all human beings to "junkies". On this hypothesis, knowledge junkies are driven to learn more information by a craving for the brain's own natural opium-like substances. - September 2006
The head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that Afghanistan's harvest in 2006 will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium - a world record. This figure amounts to some 92% of global opium supply. - November 2006
Senior UK police officer Howard Roberts advocates legalisation of heroin and its availability without charge on National Health Service (NHS) prescription. - August 2007
Afghanistan's poppy production rises an estimated 15 percent over 2006. Afghanistan now accounts for 95 percent of the world's opium poppy crop, a 3 percentage point increase over last year. The US State Department's top counternarcotics official Tom Schweich claims that Afghanistan is now "providing close to 95 percent of the world's heroin". - October 2007
Death of Golden Triangle opium lord and former Shan separatist leader Khun Sa (1933-2007). At its peak, Khun Sa's narcotics empire controlled production of an estimated quarter of the world's heroin supply. - March 2008
A report by The Pew Centre, a Washington think tank, reveals that over one in 100 adults in the USA is now in jail: some 2,300,000 prisoners, triple the rate in the 1980s. American prisons now hold around a quarter of the world's inmates. Nearly half of US federal prisoners are imprisoned for non-violent, drug-related "crimes". Law professor Paul Cassell of the University of Utah comments on the size of the US prison population: "it's the price of living in the most free society in the world.” - November 2008
Swiss voters overwhelmingly endorse a permanent and comprehensive legalized heroin program. - February 2009
FDA announces plans further to restrict access to opioid-based pain-relievers by American citizens and their doctors. - March 2009
According to the World Health Organization, around 80% of the world’s population does not have adequate access to pain relief. The international organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) blames a failure of leadership, inadequate training of health care workers, and “over-zealous drug control efforts”. - May 2010
Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirms that mice (and humans?) can synthesise their own morphine. - July 2011
Seattle hosts Kappa Therapeutics, the world's first conference dedicated to kappa opioids and antagonists. The kappa receptor is the "nasty" opioid receptor, bound by dynorphin. Selective, orally active kappa opioid antagonists, notably JDTic and the shorter-acting zyklophin, are subjectively enjoyable and relaxing; but they (probably) lack significant "abuse potential". Investigators hope that selective kappa opioid antagonists can be used therapeutically to treat anxiety disorders, clinical depression, anhedonia, eating disorders, alcoholism and a variety of substance abuse disorders.
Opium: A History.
by Martin Booth
Simon & Schuster, Ltd., 1996.
Here’s a woman smoking a pipe in the privacy of her own home in San Francisco around 1920. Is that a cat again at the foot of the bed?
Those who could afford to smoke – especially wealthy Chinese or non-Chinese opium smokers in San Francisco – did so from home where they were much less likely to be subject to a police raid.
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-incredible-images-19th-century-opium-dens?image=13#Bv53q1Oz6JqOGyk2.99
-----
Source: The Times
Date: 23 November 2006
Opium smoking much beloved by Victorian intellectuals could be making a comeback in Britain a national drugs conference was warned yesterday.International drugs experts believe that traffickers faced with off-loading a record crop of opium poppies in Afghanistan are not bothering to refine opium into heroin but smuggling it direct for sale. Smoking opium could make a comeback in Britain
By Stewart Tendler,
Crime Correspondent of The Times
One route is believed to be via France, after French customs seized 36 kilos of opium which was due to be smuggled through the Channel Tunnel to Folkestone in October.
Last year the total seizure of opium in France was a mere two kilos. In Britain, the latest figures for the seizure of all opiate drugs, including other drugs as well as opium, was 30 kilos in 2003.
Opium is a gum produced from the washed sap of the poppy. Until the creation of international controls in the early 20th Century, opium was widely smoked in the Middle and Far East and in Europe where it was used by painters and writers. Forty times less potent than heroin, opium is nonetheless highly addictive. It was widely used in the Far East where Britain went to war twice in the 19th Century to control the trade to China.
A warning that the French seizure is a sign of a potential trend came yesterday from Jean-Luc Lemahieu, chief of the European and Western Asia section of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Mr Lemahieu, speaking at a national conference on drug problems organised by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Manchester, said there was evidence that traffickers were going back to "traditional markets" and attempting "re-establish the Victorian habit of opium use". He said the trend was very small but there have been seizures in Britain and the drug markets would have to be watched.
Traffickers are faced with a record Afghanistan harvest of 6,100 tonnes of opium in 2006 equal to 610 tonnes of heroin.
The vast majority is coming from Helmand province where the British army is trying to gain control of the area. Helmand has seen a 121 per cent growth in Opium in one year alone. In 2005 the worldwide figure was 4750 tonnes.
Mr Lemahieu said the price of heroin has been low in Britain for some years but the traffickers may ship more with a greater purity. One result would be increasing overdose deaths. Traffickers could also stockpile drugs along the routes into Europe and may also try to smuggle into China which traditionally had a big opium market.
He also warned the conference that cocaine is starting to replace ecstasy as the drug used by young people in clubs. Mr Lemahieu said: "New users see it as harmless after seeing ecstasy is safe."
Andy sellers, one of the senior officers in the Serious Organised Crime Agency - Britain's version of the FBI - admitted to the conference that the overall picture of heroin and opium problems is poor and the long term future looks bleak.
"My key message is that the threat is increasing, traditional seizures don't make any discernible difference," he said.
The price of heroin has been falling and the only problem for the traffickers is transportation. Mr Sellers said 25 to 35 tonnes of heroin are reaching the United Kingdom each year, worth about £1.26 billion, of which 95 per cent comes from Afghanistan.
But Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister responsible for drug policies, said that there was evidence that drug markets are stabilising. Use of class A drugs is falling according to research.
Asked about any growth in the opium trade Mr Coaker said that work was under way in Afghanistan to cut production and disrupt the supply routes.
* * * FAMOUS USERS OF OPIUM HAVE INCLUDED
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the early 19th Century poet who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Xanadu
Thomas de Quincey, an English writer and author of Confessions of an Opium-eaterpublished in 1821.
Edgar Berlioz, the French 19th Century composer.
Edgar Alan Poe, 19th Century American writer of black and gothic stories and poetry.
Jean Cocteau, 20th Century French avant garde writer.
--------- These three opium smokers in Calcutta’s Chinatown don’t seem to mind the fact that their surroundings are a bit filthy (if the discoloration of the walls with what looks like mold or fungus is anything to go by). The photo was taken by American GIs in 1945, and here’s what they had to say about the experience: “A little snooping in Chinatown will turn up the little opium dens stuck down an alley (not recommended without police escort). Actually, the smokers shown in this picture do it legally. Each den is licensed for so many pipes. Each pipe costs a rupee, a phial of opium five rupees. The average smoker consumes a phial a day and there are about 186 pipes licensed in Calcutta.”
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-incredible-images-19th-century-opium-dens?image=10#KbhfGzCFqAwLJrLV.99
The figures quoted by the American GIs in Calcutta may not seem too expensive, though of course, one rupee or one dollar was worth much more than today. In fact, a dollar was worth about 3.32 rupees at the time, and a dollar had about twelve times the buying power that it has today – meaning $1 in 1945 was worth what $12.30 is worth today. A pipe in Calcutta's Chinatown cost about 30 cents in 1945 – about $3.70, which is cheaper than most party drugs today.
According to Steven Martin, this photograph of an opium smoker with his cat in San Francisco became a “best-selling souvenir postcard.” Been there, done that, maybe? We’re just wondering if the cat had a whiff too.
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-incredible-images-19th-century-opium-dens?image=11#SHa8ZDSFWtiMsDGE.99
This is a rather elaborately decorated opium den in Denver, Colorado. But it wasn’t aesthetics the owners were after; all the wall hangings were used to cover drafts so that the lamp wouldn’t flicker.
Word War II disrupted the opium trade routes and furthered the decline of the drug’s popularity and that of opium dens. Today, opiates either fall under the tightly regulated market of prescription drugs or are produced and distributed illegally as recreational drugs, usually in the form of heroin.
The opium dens of yesteryear are gone for good and all that remains are these fascinating photographs, perhaps taken to document the user in question having engaged in a “cool” activity – at a time when less was known about the lasting side effects or dangers.
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-incredible-images-19th-century-opium-dens?image=14#9HAT3I1LJRvP2VKV.99
How Thai monks saved my life': Opium addict who smoked 30 pipes a day details his love affair with the drug and the vomit therapy that cured him
- Steven Martin, 50, first smoked opium in 1992 in Laos, where the last of the old Chinese-style opium dens still existed
- Martin says he never found a detailed, honest account by an opium addict, even during the drug's heyday
- He came off the drug at Thailand's Tham Krabok Monastery through Buddhist monastic discipline and a vomit-inducing herbal drink
- Addicts were lined up daily over a trough and given 'muddy potion' to drink before vomiting 'torrents of rust-coloured puke'
- He says people who lived near the monastery 'used to complain that at night they could hear the addicts’ screams all the way into town'
A former opium addict has described his 20-year love affair with the drug and the vomit therapy that cured him in a tell-all book.
At the peak of his addiction, Steven Martin, now 50, would smoke up to 30 pipes per day and was unable to leave his home at night for fear he might not get a fix.
'Opium Fiend, A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction' opens with this harrowing description of the American author trying to cut himself off from a drug that had taken over his life as a freelance journalist in Southeast Asia.
Anything for a hit: In this photo taken in mid 2007, Steven Martin himself smokes opium in the living room of his apartment in Chinatown in Bangkok when he had a twenty-pipe-per-day opium habit
Describing the first time he tried to get help in the late 1990s, he said: 'After seven years of curious dabbling I had awoken from my pleasant dream and found myself a voracious opium fiend with a 30-pipe-a-day habit.'
He tells how, one Halloween night, in a blacked-out bedroom in Bangkok's Chinatown, he went into physical and mental free fall.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212353/Opium-addict-smoked-20-pipes-day-details-love-affair-drug-vomit-therapy-cured-him.html#ixzz2iYdfF8H8
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THE MAN in the 100-year-old photograph is not, to the modern eye, prepossessing. Balding, bespectacled and clerkish, he scarcely dominates his own portrait, let alone the picture of him with his staff in his laboratory.Yet Heinrich Dreser, chemist and opportunist, was one of the most influential men of his age.
Between 1897 and 1914, Dreser worked for Bayer, the former dye factory that was to become the first of the world's pharmaceutical giants, in Wuppertal, north-west Germany.
Friedrich Engels was born there. While Dreser made less of a mark on history, you could argue he had the greater influence on the 20th century. As head of Bayer's pharmacological laboratory, he was responsible for the launch of two drugs that have shaped the way we live: aspirin, the world's most successful legal drug; and heroin, the most successful illegal one.
Aspirin, of which the world now consumes 40 billion tablets a year, was launched 100 years ago next February. A fanfare of publicity will mark the centenary.
The centenary of heroin is more ambiguous: it was launched in November 1898 but was registered as a trademark in various countries from June that year, most lucratively in the US in August. But whenever the centenary falls, Bayer won't be celebrating.
This is understandable; but the stories of aspirin and heroin are intertwined, not least through Dreser.
Born in 1860, in Darmstadt, the son of a physics professor, he showed promise as a chemist from an early age. After receiving his doctorate from Heidelberg University, he worked in various laboratories before becoming a professor at Bonn University in 1893. Four years later he joined the Bayer Company, where he was in charge of testing the efficacy and safety of new drugs.
Dreser was admired for his thorough, methodical approach, and for his innovations in testing (he was, for example, the first chemist to use animal experiments on an industrial scale). The credit for originating new products for Bayer belonged, strictly speaking, to the researcher Arthur Eichengruen, but Dreser had the power to decide which new products would be developed. He had also negotiated a special deal which guaranteed him a share of the profits from products he launched.
In 1897 the Bayer chemist Felix Hoffmann, acting on Eichengruen's instructions, discovered a new process for modifying salicyclic acid (a remedy for fever and inflammation which unfortunately has excruciating digestive side effects) to produce acetylsalicyclic acid (ASA).
This compound, later to be named Aspirin, had been isolated before and the healing powers of salicylates (derived from willow bark) had been known for centuries. But Hoffmann had created a reliable process for making it.
Eichengruen enthusiastically recommended ASA to Dreser in 1898. Dreser, after cursory consideration, rejected it. Ostensibly, his objection was that ASA would have an "enfeebling" action on the heart. "The product has no value," he pronounced confidently. But the real problem was almost certainly that he had another product on his mind whose impending success he was anxious not to jeopardise. This was heroin.
Like aspirin, the drug that Bayer launched under the trademark Heroin in 1898 was not an original discovery. Diacetylmorphine, a white, odourless, bitter, crystalline powder deriving from morphine, had been invented in 1874 by an English chemist, C R Wright.
But Dreser was the first to see its commercial potential. Scientists had been looking for some time for a non-addictive substitute for morphine, then widely used as a painkiller and in the treatment of respiratory diseases. If diacetylmorphine could be shown to be such a product, Bayer - and Dreser - would hit the jackpot.
Diacetylmorphine was first synthesised in the Bayer laboratory in 1897 - by Hoffmann, two weeks after he first synthesised ASA. The work seems to have been initiated by Dreser, who was by then aware of Wright's discovery, even though he subsequently implied that heroin was an original Bayer invention.
By early 1898 was testing it on sticklebacks, frogs and rabbits. He also tested it on some of Bayer's workers, and on himself. The workers loved it, some saying it made them feel "heroic" (heroisch). This was also the term used by chemists to describe any strong drug (and diacetylmorphine is four times stronger than morphine). Creating a brand name was easy.
In November 1898, Dreser presented the drug to the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians, claiming it was 10 times more effective as a cough medicine than codeine, but had only a tenth of its toxic effects. It was also more effective than morphine as a painkiller. It was safe. It wasn't habit-forming. In short, it was a wonder drug - the Viagra of its day.
"What we don't recognise now," says David Muso, professor of psychiatry and the history of medicine at Yale Medical School, "is that this met what was then a desperate need - not for a painkiller, but for a cough remedy".
Tuberculosis and pneumonia were then the leading causes of death, and even routine coughs and colds could be severely incapacitating. Heroin, which both depresses respiration and, as a sedative, gives a restorative night's sleep, seemed a godsend.
The initial response to its launch was overwhelmingly positive. Dreser had already written about the drug in medical journals, and studies had endorsed his view that heroin could be effective in treating asthma, bronchitis, phthisis and tuberculosis. Now mailshots and free samples were sent out by the thousand to physicians in Europe and the US. The label on the samples showed a lion and a globe. (There is a notorious brand of Burmese heroin, Double Globe, that uses remarkably similar packaging today.)
By 1899, Bayer was producing about a ton of heroin a year, and exporting the drug to 23 countries. The country where it really took off was the US, where there was already a large population of morphine addicts, a craze for patent medicines, and a relatively lax regulatory framework. Manufacturers of cough syrup were soon lacing their products with Bayer heroin.
There were heroin pastilles, heroin cough lozenges, heroin tablets, water-soluble heroin salts and a heroin elixir in a glycerine solution. Bayer never advertised heroin to the public but the publicity material it sent to physicians was unambiguous. One flyer described the product thus: "Heroin: the Sedative for Coughs . . . order a supply from your jobber."
"It possesses many advantages over morphine," wrote the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1900. "It's not hypnotic, and there's no danger of acquiring a habit."
But worrying rumours were surfacing. As early as 1899, researchers began to report patients developing "tolerance" to the drug, while a German researcher denounced it as "an extremely dangerous poison". By 1902 - when heroin sales were accounting for roughly five percent of Bayer's net profits - French and American researchers were reporting cases of "heroinism" and addiction.
The bandwagon took time to stop. Between 1899 and 1905, at least 180 clinical works on heroin were published around the world, and most were favourable, if cautious. In 1906, the American Medical Association approved heroin for medical use, though with strong reservations about a "habit" that was "readily formed".
But with the accumulation of negative reports and the steady encroachment on the market by other manufacturers, it was clear heroin would never deliver the riches that Dreser had yearned for.
Had heroin been his only pet project, this disappointment could have spelt career disaster. Dreser had the kind of personality that needed commercial results to lend it plausibility. With his unfashionably formal clothes and his habit of dragging an overweight dachshund to work with him, he was seen as an eccentric loner, a "difficult" man whose ready sarcasm and autocratic manner meant he did not want for enemies.
Luckily, although his first "baby" was showing signs of turning into a monster, Dreser had belatedly adopted another: aspirin. Eichengruen, refusing to accept Dreser's rejection of ASA, had continued to investigate it and to lobby for its development. Eventually, Dreser recognised which way the wind was blowing, tested ASA on himself (as well as on his laboratory of rabbits), and finally published an enthusiastic scientific paper recommending it, particularly for the treatment of rheumatism - but omitting to mention the contributions of Eichengruen and Hoffmann. In February 1899, the brand name "Aspirin" was registered, and in June, Dreser presided over its launch.
Like heroin, aspirin more or less sold itself. As a painkiller without undesirable side effects, it was - and remained for decades - unique. By the end of 1899 it was being used all over Europe and the US, and by the time the heroin bubble burst, aspirin had more than filled the gap. Bayer was on its way to becoming an industrial giant. Hoffman and Eichengruen do not seem to have received any special compensation for their efforts. For Dreser, though, the rewards were spectacular.
In 1913, Bayer decided to stop making heroin. There had been an explosion of heroinrelated admissions at New York and Philadelphia hospitals, and in East Coast cities a substantial population of recreational users was reported (some supported their habits by collecting and selling scrap metal, hence the name "junkie"). Prohibition seemed inevitable and, sure enough, the next year the use of heroin without prescription was outlawed in the US. (A court ruling in 1919 also determined it illegal for doctors to prescribe it to addicts.)
But Dreser was now earning, on top of his "substantial" salary, more than 100 000 marks a year (aboutBy 1914 Dreser was an exceptionally rich 53-year-old - so much so that he decided not to renew his contract at Bayer. When war broke out he moved to Dusseldorf as honorary, unsalaried professor of his own pharmacological institute at the new Medical Academy.
Thereafter, the record becomes indistinct. His first wife died, there were no children and, it appears, few friends. There were rumours that he was addicted to heroin himself. Eventually, his health deteriorated. His last years may or may not have been happy. But they were certainly comfortable - which is more than can be said for Eichengruen, who, in his eighties, emerged from a concentration camp to write an unpublished denunciation of Dreser's "discovery" of aspirin.
In 1924, health problems forced Dreser to give up his institute and he moved to Zurich, where he remarried. That year, the US banned the use and manufacture of heroin altogether, even for medical purposes. (In Britain, the medical use of heroin continues to this day, accounting for 95 percent of the world's legal heroin consumption.) The same year, four days before Christmas, Dreser died.
The cause of death was given as a cerebral apoplexy, or stroke. It is just conceivable - had anyone known it - that he could have averted this fate by the simple expedience of taking an aspirin a day. If the rumours of addiction were true, the irony is doubled: Dreser, incorrigible in his misjudgment, had spent his twilight years taking a daily dose of the wrong wonder drug.
Even before its properties as a prophylactic against circulatory disease became known, aspirin changed the lives of millions, reducing the sum of human misery. It also produced untold wealth for, among others, the shareholders of Bayer, which still earns about R4-billion a year from the drug. (Those "others" include the generations of lawyers who acted in an 80-year orgy of litigation in which the original Bayer company, having had its American assets confiscated at the end of World War One, fought to reclaim the right to sell "Bayer aspirin" in the US.)
The impact of heroin is harder to assess. In 1898, there were an estimated 250 000 morphine addicts in the US - a per capita rate roughly twice as high as today's. In Britain, similarly, opium use was widespread, especially in East Anglia, where it was a more or less necessary antidote to the malaria endemic in the Fens. It was also used as a sedative for babies. (In Britain, however, opium seems to have been superseded not by heroin but by other modern drugs - notably aspirin.)
But the appearance of heroin played a crucial role in cementing the link between drug abuse and crime. Pharmacologically, heroin has the same effect as morphine. But you need only about a quarter as much to get the same effect. It is also cheaper, quicker and easier to use. As national and international legislation against opiates gathered force after 1914, addicts who wished to continue their habit inevitably switched to heroin. By 1924, 98 percent of New York's drug addicts were thought to be heroin addicts. With legal channels of supply closed, criminal gangs - first Jewish, then Italian - began to monopolise the trade. By the end of the 30s, the Mafia was inextricably involved.
Today, heroin use in Britain and the US is increasing faster than at any time since the 60s: heroin seizures rose by 135 percent between 1996 and 1997. There are thought to be between 160 000 and 200 000 heroin addicts in the UK, who spend almost R30-billion a year on heroin. And the British government spends R14-billion a year on drug-related policies.
The other great change resulting from Dreser's marketing of a faster-acting and more conveniently consumed opiate has been a change in the profile of the average opiate abuser. In 1898, the typical morphine addict in Britain or the US was a middle-class woman in her forties, whereas today's typical addict is an 18-year-old male.
CHEMICAL REACTION: Dreser (seated, right) with his staff at Bayer, where he tested aspirin and heroin on himself
As early as 1899, researchers began to report patients developing 'tolerance' to the drug, while a German researcher denounced it as 'an extremely dangerous poison'. By 1902 - when heroin sales were accounting for roughly five percent of Bayer's net profits - French and American researchers were reporting cases of 'heroinism' and addiction
Heroin as a cough medicine 
Of all plants used in the field of medicine, none has been as widely employed – nor has helped to save as many lives and ease suffering – as the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. The plant and its derivatives have been used since antiquity. Cultivation of opium poppy dates to the Neolithic Age, and remnants of opium date back as far as 10,000 years, to ruins of Swiss lake dwellers. Sumerian images of opium date back to 4,000 BC. The ancient Minoans, whose culture flourished in Crete during the Bronze Age, employed opium and its sap as medicine.
Several narcotics, known collectively as opiates, derive from opium – including morphine, codeine, thebaine, papaverine and noscapine. In total, as many as fifty alkaloids are present in opium poppy. Categorized as a euphoric agent, the opium poppy is the source of the very first medicinal compound ever isolated in pure form. That alkaloid – morphine – was isolated in 1804 by German pharmacist Friederich Serturner. He dubbed the alkaloid morphium, after Morpheus the Greek god of dreams, for its capacity to induce sleep.
Morphine, the most abundant alkaloid in opium, is the most effective and potent pain-relieving agent in medicine, acting directly upon the central nervous system. For relieving severe or agonizing pain, morphine is the gold standard. When someone is suffering debilitating pain, especially due to injury or surgical procedures, no other substance will relieve pain as well or as quickly. First sold by the Merck chemist shop in 1827, morphine is used in virtually every hospital today. That shop eventually became the global drug giant Merck Pharmaceuticals.
The second most abundant alkaloid in the opium poppy is codeine, which also possesses pain-relieving properties. Codeine is most widely used as an antitussive, or cough relieving agent. Formerly used in over-the-counter cough syrups, codeine is now available only by prescription, as it is both psychoactive and habit-forming.
The opium poppy yields a sticky latex that has been employed since antiquity as a mind-altering drug. The latex is prepared in large balls and can be stored for long periods of time. In history, the largest trader of opium was Britain’s East India Company, which plied the opium trade heavily in China, enslaving millions of Chinese into opium addiction in the 1800s.
Laudanum, a bitter, reddish-brown fluid extract of opium, became an addictive agent in the United States in the 1700s and 1800s. It is still available today, though only by prescription. Used as a pain-reliever and a cough suppressant, laudanum found its way into numerous patent medicines and so-called “snake oils” prior to its legal regulation. Unlike morphine, codeine or the other opium alkaloids, laudanum is an extract of whole opium latex, containing all of the narcotic compounds found in that sap.
Today, large-scale cultivation of opium poppies for the production of heroin can be found in Mexico, Afghanistan, and throughout Asia. Oddly, heroin was first developed by drug giant Bayer as a cure for morphine addiction. It worked. Today there is relatively little morphine addiction, though an estimated 9 million people globally are now addicted to heroin. Technically it is illegal to grow opium poppies in the U.S., but enforcement of this is fuzzy as opium poppies are popular ornamental flowers grown widely in America and Canada. Opium poppies are controlled according to the Controlled Substances Act.
The opium poppy, with its globe-shaped seed pod and beautiful flower petals, makes an impressive site, especially when there are thousands of flowering poppies all in one place. I have seen large fields of poppy in Morocco, and the sight is breathtaking. Woven deeply into various cultural histories, and critically valuable to the field of medicine, opium occupies a rare and important place in the human story.
Chris Kilham is a medicine hunter who researches natural remedies all over the world, from the Amazon to Siberia.
-------more quoted;
Opium Side Effects
Many long & short term side effects result from the use of opium including damage to the lungs and other organs. Repeated use of opium in a manner conducive to causing physical dependence can lead to lifelong consequences that are both difficult to treat and difficult to cope with. Although the side effects of opium that are felt short-term such as euphoria or sedation may be comforting, as tolerance develops, even these side effects will diminish and the negative aspects of the opium use will quickly begin to set in.
Initially, smoking opium will lead to a euphoric state that then quickly turns to a sleepy, sedated state for the user. Some people report the effects of opium as being similarly related to those of alcohol or marijuana. The short term side effects of smoking opium are mostly mild unless a larger amount of the drug is used in which case these effects can be greatly intensified and may result in hallucinations or paranoia.
Heightened anxiety is possible for some people, especially if a larger dose of opium is consumed or as the opium wears off. Most of the time, opium does not have major risks such as death from overdose but when the drug is refined into other derivatives such as heroin or morphine the risk of overdose is greatly increased and an inherent risk of death occurs.
One of the more uncomfortable side effects of opium is constipation. When the drug wears off, most users report diarrhea. Another common opium side effect is dry mouth and dehydration. Frequent urination may also occur when opium is smoked and persistent thirst is imminent.
Smoking opium can lead to risky behaviors and may result in an individual doing things that he or she otherwise would not do if they weren’t under the influence of opium. Most of these uninhibited behaviors will go back to normal as the opium’s effects wear off which typically takes about 4-6 hours. For some, the poor behaviors could persist due mainly to addiction and the desire to take part in risky behaviors associated with finding or using more drugs.
Long term side effects of using opium include damage to the internal organs and physical dependence. Opium addiction can set in after just a few weeks of using this drug and the subsequent withdrawal symptoms that occur when an individual is addicted to opium can be difficult and uncomfortable for the user. Many people continue to smoke opium simply to ward off the withdrawal symptoms that they feel when they don’t use the drug after physical dependence has set in. The best way to avoid all of the potentially dangerous side effects of opium is to avoid use of opium or it’s derivatives all together.
It's fair to say that by the 18th century, opium smoking had become an integral part of the Chinese Qing Dynasty culture. In the 19th century, it spread to the Chinese quarters of Asian cities like Rangoon, Saigon and Manila, brought along by Chinese immigrants and traders eager to trade in more than goods and human labor. The opium culture was quickly picked up in South Asian capitals, too, and soon became a craze among the local populations. In China, more than a quarter of the country’s male population is said to have been addicted by 1905.
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-incredible-images-19th-century-opium-dens?image=4#TrcJGmI80eKog5k6.99
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-incredible-images-19th-century-opium-dens?image=5#rd0Elg7fLkYZ04Wh.99
Here’s another group of “typical well-off opium smokers in China in the late 19th century.”
In his book Opium, author Matthias Seefelder describes the effects of smoking opium in the following way: “Depending on the level of addiction, soon or sometimes only after several pipes, the peculiar state of comforting pleasure came over the smokers. The drug of ecstasy took effect, all burdens were lifted and pleasant visions, often of an erotic nature, filled them. A leaden tiredness followed soon after and finally, narcotic sleep. The hangover arrived after waking up and with it the unconquerable desire for the next pipe.”
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-incredible-images-19th-century-opium-dens?image=8#VYeZFTZfMVTgbfti.99
from
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
by
Thomas de Quincey
(1785-1859)
Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking: and, what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it: -- and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes: -- this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me -- in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea -- a [pharmakon nepenthez] for all human woes: here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle: and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail coach. But, if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am laughing: and I can assure him, that nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion; and in his happiest state, the opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of Il Allegro: even then, he speaks and thinks as becomes Il Penseroso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery: and, unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm nature in this respect: and with a few indulgences of that sort, I shall endeavour to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed.
And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects: for upon all that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right), or by professors of medicine, writing ex cathedra, -- I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce -- Lies! lies! lies! I remember once, in passing a book-stall, to have caught these words from a page of some satiric author: -- "By this time I became convinced that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, viz. on Tuesday and Saturday, and might safely be depended upon for -- the list of bankrupts." In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have been delivered to the world in regard to opium: thus it has been repeatedly affirmed by the learned, that opium is a dusky brown in colour; and this, take notice, I grant: secondly, that it is rather dear; which I also grant: for in my time, East-India opium has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight: and, thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you must -- do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz. die.[2] These weighty propositions are, all and singular, true: I cannot gainsay them: and truth ever was, and will be, commendable. But in these three theorems, I believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by man on the subject of opium. And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward and lecture on this matter.
First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted, by all who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does, or can, produce intoxication. Now reader, assure yourself, meo periculo, that no quantity of opium ever did, or could intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum) thatmight certainly intoxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? because it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol; and not in degree only incapable, but even in kind: it is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which it declines: that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: the first, to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute -- the second, of chronic pleasure: the one is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self possession: opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, the loves and the hatreds, of the drinker: opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive: and with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections: but then, with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation, there is always more or less of a maudlin character, which exposes it to the contempt of the by-stander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears -- no mortal knows why: and the sensual creature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings, incident to opium, is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that state which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any deep- seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of a heard originally just and good. True it is, that even wine, up to a certain point, and with certain men, rather tends to exalt and to steady the intellect: I myself, who have never been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half a dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties -- brightened and intensified the consciousness -- and gave to the mind a feeling of being "ponderibus librata suis"; and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor: for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety; and it is when they are drinking (as some old gentleman says in Athenaeus), that men [eantonz emfanixondin oitinez eidin]. -- display themselves in their true complexion of character; which surely is not disguising themselves. But still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance; and, beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatilize and to disperse the intellectual energies: whereas opium always seems to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his nature: but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity; and over all is the great light of the majestic intellect.
This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member -- the alpha and the omega: but then it is to be recollected, that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience: whereas most of the unscientific[3] authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written expressly on the materia medica, make it evident, from the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as staggered my own incredulity: for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologized for him, by suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not prima facie, and of necessity, an absurd one: but the defence is. To my surprise, however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the right: "I will maintain," said he, "that I dotalk nonsense; and secondly, I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with any view to profit, but solely and simply, said he, solely and simply, -- solely and simply (repeating it three times over), because I am drunk with opium; and that daily." I replied that, as to the allegation of his enemies, as it seemed to be established upon such respectable testimony, seeing that the three parties concerned all agreed in it, it did not become me to question it; but the defence set up I must demur to. He proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his reasons: but it seemed to me so impolite to pursue an argument which must have presumed a man mistaken in a point belonging to his own profession, that I did not press him even when his course of argument seemed open to objection: not to mention that a man who talks nonsense, even though "with no view to profit," is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a dispute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, however, that the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to my prejudice: but still I must plead my experience, which was greater than his greatest by 7000 drops a day; and, though it was not possible to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms of vinous intoxication, it yet struck me that he might proceed on a logical error of using the word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending it generically to all modes of nervous excitement, connected with certain diagnostics. Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that they had been drunk on green tea: and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other day, that a patient, in recovering from an illness, had got drunk on a beef-steak.
Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error, in respect t opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying; assuring my reader, that for ten years, during which I took opium at intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits.
With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is classed under the head of narcotics; and some such effect it may produce in the end: but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system: this first stage of its action always lasted with me, during my noviciate, for upwards of eight hours; so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But that the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to stupify the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the question illustratively, rather than argumentively) describe the way in which I myself often passed an opium evening in London, during the period between 1804-1812. It will be seen, that at least opium did not move me to seek solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state of self- involution ascribed to the Turks. I give this account at the risk of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or visionary: but I regard that little: I must desire my reader to bear in mind, that I was a hard student, and at severe studies for all the rest of my time: and certainly had a right occasionally to relaxations as well as the other people: these, however, I allowed myself but seldom.
The late Duke of Norfolk used to say, "Next Friday, by the blessing of Heaven, I purpose to be drunk:" and in like manner I used to fix beforehand how often, within a given time, and when, I would commit a debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in three weeks: for at that time I could no have ventured to call every day (as I did afterwards) for "a glass of laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar." No: as I have said, I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, more than once in three weeks: this was usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday night; my reason for which was this. In those days Grassini sang at the Opera: and her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. I know not what may be the state of the Opera- house now, having never been within its walls for seven or eight years, but at that time it was by much the most pleasant place of public resort in London for passing an evening. Five shillings admitted one to the gallery, which was subject to far less annoyance than the pit of the theatres: the orchestra was distinguished by its sweet and melodious grandeur from all English orchestras, the composition of which, I confess, is not acceptable to my ear, from the predominance of the clangorous instruments, and the absolute tyranny of the violin. The choruses were divine to hear: and when Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her passionate soul as Andromache, at the tomb of Hector, &c. I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the Paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, I honour the Barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. For music is an intellectual or a sensual pleasure, according to the temperament of him who hears it. And, by the bye, with the exception of the fine extravaganza on that subject in Twelfth Night, I do not recollect more than one thing said adequately on the subject of music in all literature: it is a passage in theReligio Medici[4] of Sir T. Brown; and, though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects. The mistake of most people is to suppose that it is by the ear they communicate with music, and, therefore, that they are purely passive to its effects. But this is not so: it is by the re-action of the mind upon the notices of the ear, (the matter coming by the senses, theform from the mind) that the pleasure is constructed: and therefore it is that people of equally good ear differ so much in this point from one another. Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind generally, increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure. But, says a friend, a succession of musical sounds is to me like a collection of Arabic characters: I can attach no ideas to them. Ideas! my good sir? there is no occasion for them: all that class of ideas, which can be available in such a case, has a language of representative feelings. But this is a subject foreign to my present purposes: it is sufficient to say, that a chorus, &c. of elaborate harmony, displayed before me, as in a piece of arras work, the whole of my past life -- not, as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music: no longer painful to dwell upon: but the detail of its incidents removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction; and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this was to be had for five shillings. And over nd above the music of the stage and the orchestra, I had all around me, in the intervals of the performance, the music of the Italian language talked by Italian women: for the gallery was usually crowded with Italians: and I listened with a pleasure such as that with which Weld the traveller lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian women; for the less you understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the melody or harshness of its sounds: for such a purpose, therefore, it was an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian scholar, reading it but little, and not speaking it at all, nor understanding a tenth part of what I heard spoken.
These were my Opera pleasures: but another pleasure I had which, as it could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled with my love of the Opera; for, at that time, Tuesday and Saturday were the regular Opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be rather obscure, but, I can assure the reader, not at all more so than Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many other biographers and auto-biographers of fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only on a Saturday night. What then was Saturday night to me more than any other night? I had no labours that I rested from; no wages to receive: what needed I to care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons to hear Grassini? True, most logical reader: what you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is, that, whereas different men throw their feelings into different channels, and most are apt to show their interest in the concerns of the poor, chiefly by sympathy, expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses and sorrows, I, at that time, was disposed to express my interest by sympathising with their pleasures. The pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of; more than I wished to remember: but the pleasures of the poor, their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never become oppressive to contemplate. Now Saturday night is the season for the chief, regular, and periodic return of rest to the poor: in this point the most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a common link of brotherhood: almost all Christendom rests from its labours. It is a rest introductory to another rest: and divided by a whole day and two nights from the renewal of toil. On this account I feel always, on a Saturday night, as though I also were released from some yoke of labour, had some wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible, a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used often, on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth, without much regarding the direction or the distance, to all the markets, and other parts of London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday night, for laying out their wages. Many a family party, consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his children, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard murmurs of discontent: but far oftener expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and tranquility. And taken generally, I must say, that, in this point at least, the poor are far more philosophic than the rich -- that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediably evils, or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties; and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher, or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I was glad: yet, if the contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a compliance with the master key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances: for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time. And sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters, and confound the intellects of hackney- coachmen. I could almost have believed, at times, that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terrae incognitae, and doubted, whether they had yet been aid down in the modern charts of London. For all this, however, I paid a heavy price in distant years, when the human face tyrannized over my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London came back and haunted my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities moral or intellectual, that brought confusion to the reason, or anguish and remorse to the conscience.
Thus I have shown that opium does not, of necessity, produce inactivity or torpor; but that, on the contrary, it often led me into markets and theatres. Yet, in candour, I will admit that markets and theatres are not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater, when in the divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that state, crowds become an oppression to him; music even, too sensual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and silence, as indispensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consummation of what opium can do for human nature. I, whose disease it was to meditate too much, and to observe too little, and who, upon my first entrance at college, was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, from brooding too much on the sufferings which I had witnessed in London, was sufficiently aware of the tendencies of my own thoughts to do all I could to counteract them. -- I was, indeed, like a person who, according to the old legend, had entered the cave of Trophonius: and the remedies I sought were to force myself into society, and to keep my understanding in continual activity upon matters of science. But for these remedies, I should certainly have become hypochondriacally melancholy. In after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re-established, I yielded to my natural inclination for a solitary life. And, at that time, I often fell into these reveries upon taking opium; and more than once it has happened to me, on a summer-night, when I have been at an open window, in a room from which I could overlook the sea at a mile below me, and could command a view of the great town of Liverpool, at about the same distance, that I have sate, from sun-set to sun-rise, motionless, and without wishing to move.
I shall be charged with mysticism, behmenism, quietism, &c. but that shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, was one of our wisest men: and let my readers see if he, in his philosophical works, be half as unmystical as I am. -- I say, then, that it has often struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place in such a reverie. The town of Liverpool represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite granted from the secret burthens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm: a tranquility that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose.
Oh! just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for "the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest and assuaging balm; eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood; and to the proud man, a brief oblivion for
Wrongs unredress'd, and insults unavenged;
Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (February 15, 2001 8:19 p.m. EST
U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.
A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.
"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies.
A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated.
Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium -- the milky substance drained from the poppy plant -- is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 1999 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.
Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.
The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.
The U.N. surveyors, who completed their search this week, crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan last year, Frahi said in an interview Wednesday. They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had been awash in poppies.
This year they found poppies growing on barely an acre here and there, Frahi said. The rest -- about 175,000 acres -- was clean.
"We have to look at the situation with careful optimism," said Sandro Tucci of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, Austria.
He said indications are that no poppies were planted this season and that, as a result, there hasn't been any production of opium -- but that officials would keep checking.
The State Department counternarcotics official said the department would make its own estimate of the poppy crop. Information received so far suggests there will be a decrease, but how much is not yet clear, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"We do not think by any stretch of the imagination that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been eliminated. But we, like the rest of the world, welcome positive news."
The Drug Enforcement Administration declined to comment.
No U.S. government official can enter Afghanistan because of security concerns stemming from the presence of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Poppies are harvested in March and April, which is why the survey was done now. Tucci said it would have been impossible for the poppies to have been harvested already.
The areas searched by the U.N. surveyors are the most fertile lands under Taliban control. Other areas, though they are somewhat fertile, have not traditionally been poppy growing areas and farmers are struggling to raise any crops at all because of severe drought. The rest of the land held by the Taliban is mountainous or desert, where poppies could not grow.
Karim Rahimi, the U.N. drug control liaison in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, said farmers were growing wheat or onions in fields where they once grew poppies.
"It is amazing, really, when you see the fields that last year were filled with poppies and this year there is wheat," he said.
The Taliban enforced the ban by threatening to arrest village elders and mullahs who allowed poppies to be grown. Taliban soldiers patrolled in trucks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. About 1,000 people in Nangarhar who tried to defy the ban were arrested and jailed until they agreed to destroy their crops.
Signs throughout Nangarhar warn against drug production and use, some calling it an "illicit phenomenon." Another reads: "Be drug free, be happy."
Last year, poppies grew on 12,600 acres of land in Nangarhar province. According to the U.N. survey, poppies were planted on only 17 acres there this season and all were destroyed by the Taliban.
"The Taliban have done their work very seriously," Frahi said.
But the ban has badly hurt farmers in one of the world's poorest countries, shattered by two decades of war and devastated by drought.
Ahmed Rehman, who shares less than three acres in Nangarhar with his three brothers, said the opium he produced last year on part of the land brought him $1,100.
This year, he says, he will be lucky to get $300 for the onions and cattle feed he planted on the entire parcel.
"Life is very bad for me this year," he said. "Last year I was able to buy meat and wheat and now this year there is nothing."
But Rehman said he never considered defying the ban.
"The Taliban were patrolling all the time. Of course I was afraid. I did not want to go to jail and lose my freedom and my dignity," he said, gesturing with dirt-caked hands.
Shams-ul-Haq Sayed, an officer of the Taliban drug control office in Jalalabad, said farmers need international aid.
"This year was the most important for us because growing poppies was part of their culture, and the first years are always the most difficult," he said.
Tucci said discussions are under way on how to help the farmers.
Western diplomats in Pakistan have suggested the Taliban is simply trying to drive up the price of opium they have stockpiled. The State Department official also said Afghanistan could do more by destroying drug stockpiles and heroin labs and arresting producers and traffickers.
Frahi dismissed that as "nonsense" and said it is drug traffickers and shopkeepers who have stockpiles. Two pounds of opium worth $35 last year are now worth as much as $360, he said.
Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani, the Taliban's top drug official in Nangarhar, said the ban would remain regardless of whether the Taliban received aid or international recognition.
"It is our decree that there will be no poppy cultivation. It is banned forever in this country," he said. "Whether we get assistance or not, poppy growing will never be allowed again in our country.
===============================
opium advertisement in the American Journal of Surgery
Analysis of opium use by students of medical sciences
by
Ahmadi J, Fallahzadeh H, Salimi A, Rahimian M,
Salehi V, Khaghani M, Babaeebeigi M.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry,
Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
J Clin Nurs. 2006 Apr;15(4):379-86.
ABSTRACT
by
Ahmadi J, Fallahzadeh H, Salimi A, Rahimian M,
Salehi V, Khaghani M, Babaeebeigi M.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry,
Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
J Clin Nurs. 2006 Apr;15(4):379-86.
ABSTRACT
Aims and objectives. To investigate the prevalence of opium use in university students. Background. University health professionals and authorities are very concerned about substance use among university students. Design. A survey with a representative sample of 2519 (1126 men and 1393 women) university students and opium use disorders assessed by means of DSM-IV criteria (Diagnostic Statistical Manual-IV Axis I during the year 2003). Findings. Mean age of the sample was 23.8 year and SD was 3.9. Of the students, 110 (4.4%) admitted using of opium once or more during their lives (9.1% of men and 0.6% of women; P < 0.01). Fifty (2%) were occasional opium user (4.2% of men and 0.2% of women; P < 0.01). Nineteen (0.8%) were current opium user (1.4% of men and 0.2% of women; P = 0.001). Mean age of opium users was higher than the remainder. Opium use was significantly related to gender (P = 0.001), and life stress (P = 0.04). Conclusion. These findings can be considered for preventive and therapeutic programmes, because early intervention during the formative university years may present an opportunity to reduce the risk of long-term problems, to decrease social and individual harm and also to promote public health of society. Relevance to clinical practice. These findings can be considered in clinical practice for detection and treatment of opioid abuse.Opium
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