Opium A Problem Forever or So It Seems
The discussion that is taking place in America today concerning the corrupt practices of the opium wealth in the foreign countries in which our young warriors are dying is an age-old problem.
Would you believe that the Chinese were more or less enslaved by the English powers that existed at the time to continue to raise and process opium for export to the greedy drug hungry folks of Europe?
The East India Company, which was formed by a charter from the powerful British hierarchy as far back as 1600 by Elizabeth I.
The EIC shipped a variety of trade goods including indigo dye, silks, teas, and Opium.
The trading company was a powerful entity and came to be the source of control of large portions of India. A man with a name many of you will recognize was associated with the British East India Company for some twenty years his name was Elihu Yale.
A large portion of Yale’s capital came from being involved in the Opium trade within the BEIC.
Yes, he is associated with the forming of Yale University. It is his name from whence the University is named. {Please keep this fact in mind as we continue along the Opium Road} By the 1830s, the addiction of opium was at a crucial level in Britain with some 22,000 pounds of the drug imported into the country from India and Turkey. The drug gripped the Chinese for many years and then in 1839 the commissioner who was charged with the elimination of Opium in China at the time LinTse-Hsu issues an edict that all the foreign shippers of opium cede their supplies to the Chinese government.
This was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak to the Brits and hence was the beginning of the Opium War I which lasted for about two years with the Chinese being defeated in 1841 costing the Chinese Hong Kong in the cessation of hostilities.
This of course did not stop the use of Opium and years later in 1852, the British moved into Burma {Myanmar} and began the trade of massive amounts of the drug through government Opium brokers.
The opium that was making many shipping entrepreneurs rich eventually found its way unto the battlefields in the form of morphine during the American Civil War!
According to historical records from the early part of the 19th century when opium use and addiction was widespread in Europe and the Far East, there were a very small number of addicts in America.
By 1900 in America, roughly 200,000 individuals were addicted to some type of opiate-based product.{estimated 2.1 million people in the United States suffering from substance use disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers in 2012 and an estimated 467,000 addicted to heroin.}
With a huge increase in addicts coming after the American Civil War it is thought by many historians that the massive use of morphine as a painkiller for the horrendous surgeries {amputations} by so called civil war surgeons was the reason that there were thought to have eventually created some 500,000 morphine addicts.
Wounded Civil War veterans from both armies that were dealing with unbearable pain from their amputations etc. became addicted to morphine!
The addiction came to be known as the “soldier disease” or the “army disease,”" in the 19 th century in the aftermath of the War of the Brothers!
Drug addiction in the English-speaking world was rare at the beginning of the 19th century but common at the end of it, at least in the United States.
Some historians think the war's influence has been exaggerated and that "the army disease" is a fable concocted after the fact to justify repressive drugs laws.
(See for example http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/soldis.htm.)
A major factor in the rise of drug use no doubt was the simple fact that more stuff became available as scientists explored the wonders of drug chemistry.
Morphine, for example, was first synthesized in 1803, cocaine in 1859.
Still, even allowing for exaggeration by drug alarmists, you have to think the Civil War had some impact.
Narcotics were handed out like candy by army surgeons, who were surrounded by suffering and had few remedies to offer other than painkillers.
Nearly ten million opium pills were issued to Union soldiers, along with 2.8 million ounces of other opium preparations; no doubt opium use was fairly common on the Confederate side, too.
One doctor reported keeping a wad of "blue mass" (a powdered mercury compound) in one pocket and a ball of opium in the other. He'd ask soldiers, "How are your bowels?" If the answer was "open" (due to diarrhea), the soldier got opium, if "closed" (presumably because of constipation), mercury. Opiates were used to treat not just wounds but chronic campaign diseases such as diarrhea, dysentery, and malaria.
Narcotics became even more popular after the war as crippled veterans sought relief from constant pain.
Here is a view point to tie in with the Guardian article {https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/19/opioid-addiction-west-virginia-petersberg-breanne-mculty}on West Virginia article on the doctor who was abusing opiods and the 19 year old biggest dealer in town;
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_view/my-view-cannabis-access-mitigates-opioid-abuse-the-science-says/article_4e18af62-50e6-589d-afeb-be96080a8b3e.html
