Depiction of opium smokers in an "opium den" in the East End of London, 1874.Harvesting opium.Opium crop from the Malwa region of India
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Opium

Opium is a narcotic analgesic drug which is obtained from the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L. or the synonym paeoniflorum). more...

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Harvesting opium

To harvest opium, the skin of the ripening pods is scored by a sharp blade. The slashes exude a white, milky latex, which dries to a sticky brown resin that is scraped off the pods as raw opium.

Opium has powerful narcotic properties. Its constituents and derivatives are used as painkillers in extreme circumstances, such as in terminal stages of cancer. Therefore, a small amount of legal production is discretely conducted under strict supervision by law enforcement. The leading legal producers of opium are France and Australia. The French company Francopia produces 20% to 25% of the world's total, with total sales of approximately 60 million € (1 Euro (EUR) = 1.2085 Dollar (USD)).

Opium preparation

Raw opium must be processed and refined (called "cooking") before it is suitable for smoking. The raw opium is first dissolved in water and simmered over a low heat. The brown solution is then filtered to remove the insoluble vegetable waxes and then evaporated over a low heat. The result is a smokable form of opium with a considerably higher morphine content percentage-wise than the raw latex. This is then pressed into bricks and either transported to heroin laboratories or used as is.

Although opium is used in the form of paregoric to treat diarrhea, most opium imported into the United States is broken down into its alkaloid constituents. These alkaloids are divided into two distinct chemical classes, phenanthrenes and isoquinolines. The principal phenanthrenes are morphine, codeine, and thebaine, while the isoquinolines have no significant central nervous system effects and are not regulated under the Controlled Substances Act. Opium is also processed into heroin, and most current drug use occurs with processed derivatives rather than with raw opium.

Seed Capsules

The seed capsules also contain morphine, codeine, and other alkaloids. These pods can be boiled in water to produce a bitter tea that induces a long-lasting intoxication. Addiction to poppy tea is rare, but does occur.

Chemical properties and physiological effects

Opium resin contains two groups of alkaloids: phenanthrenes (including morphine and codeine) and benzylisoquinolines (including papaverine). Morphine is by far the most prevalent and important alkaloid in opium, consisting of 10%-16% of the total. It binds to and activates μ-opioid receptors in the brain, spinal cord, stomach and intestine. Regular use, even for a few days, invariably leads to physical tolerance and dependence. Various degrees of psychological addiction can occur, though this is relatively rare when opioids are used for treatment of pain, rather than for euphoric effects. These mechanisms result from changes in nervous system receptors in response to the drug. In response to the drug, the brain creates new receptors for opiates. These receptors are "pseudo" receptors and do not work. When the opiates are out of the body, the brain has more receptors than before the use of the drug, but only the same amount of endogenous opiate (endorphins) to fill these receptors.

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Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756-1895
From Canadian Journal of History, 12/1/04 by Campion, David A

Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756-1895, by Paul C. Winther. Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books, 2003. xviii, 429 pp. $90.00 US (cloth).

In the recent historiography of British imperialism few topics have enjoyed as much renewed interest among scholars as have science, medicine, and missionary evangelism. In this book, Paul C. Winther has provided a meticulously-researched study of how all these aspects converged in one of the more controversial episodes of British rule in India: the state-sanctioned production and marketing of opium to Indian and Chinese consumers. In the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, the Government of India regulated the production of opium for distribution to China, thus ensuring a steady flow of revenue to its treasury in Calcutta and providing the key to the domination of East Asian markets. Despite the profitability of the opium trade, the rise of missionary activity throughout the empire led to an increasingly vocal condemnation of this "infernal revenue" (p.1) and eventually threatened its demise once the Liberals came to power in Westminster in the late nineteenth century. The struggle between the pro-trade and anti-trade forces in Britain and the empire culminated in the Royal Commission on Opium, convened in 1893 to decide the future of this enterprise. Throughout the hearings, each side marshaled all available scientific evidence to argue either for the medicinal benefits of opium use or the addictive and physiologically and morally destructive powers of the substance upon its hapless victims. Central to the pro-trade argument was the dubious claim that narcotine, the active agent in opium, functioned as a preventive and curative treatment for malaria.

The main argument of the book centres around the selective use of the "drug-disease" theory by the Government of India to legitimize and protect its own political and economic stake in the opium trade. According to Winther, this "medical misconception" was merely a tactic by British officials in India to maintain their hegemony over the subcontinent and their political and financial autonomy from London (p. 4). Winther begins by describing the parallel development of imperial politics, missionary evangelism, and scientific theory during the heyday of the East India Company and in the early years of the British raj. He outlines the growth of poppy cultivation in the Indian subcontinent and the forcing open of Chinese markets in the Opium War of 1840-42, as well as highlighting contemporary scientific explanations of the physiological effects of the drug itself. The book then traces the rise of missionary activity in both China and India and the dismay of these evangelists in attempting to convert and shepherd a drug-addled and despondent flock. The moral outrage of the missionaries at the insidious activity of their own government went largely unanswered in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as commercial gain drove the engine of imperial expansion. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century - the apogee of the Victorian Age - the moral justification for the empire and the scientific knowledge of the effects of opium use could no longer ensure that this drug trade would go unchallenged. In the 1870s, anti-trade activists founded the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade (SSOT) and took their case to Parliament. Defenders of the trade countered the anti-opiumists with their own moral and scientific argument rooted in the Indian folk belief that the ingestion of opium prevented and cured malaria.

When the Royal Commission on Opium began taking witness testimony, numerous experts and quasi-experts attested to the traditional medicinal uses of the drug among the population, which ranged from alleviating indigestion and numbing pain to curing "malarial fever." According to these witnesses, many of whom were career officers of the Indian Medical Service, Indians across the subcontinent engaged in the practice of eating opium, and for many it was the only available remedy for numerous health conditions for which other more sophisticated treatments, such as quinine, would have been prohibitively expensive. The testimony of Sir William Roberts, a renowned physician and medical researcher, was particularly instrumental in undercutting the anti-opiumists' argument and driving them from the moral high ground. Roberts and other likeminded witnesses testified that the health hazards and narcotic effect of opium use, if used in moderation, were no worse than those of alcohol consumption and therefore no more grounds for the abolition of the opium trade in India than for the closing of all pubs and taverns in Britain. Moreover, the encouragement of abstinence or even underconsumption among the poorest residents in highly malarial areas would actually cause needless suffering and death on a grand scale. The tables were thus turned on the anti-opiumists, who now came across as preening and sanctimonious hypocrites against whose ignorant moralizing the pro-trade advocates were attempting to protect the weakest and most physically vulnerable of India's masses. According to Winther, "Robert's assessment provided the Government of India with a tactical flexibility to neutralize SSOT opposition that it lacked prior to the creation of the Royal Commission on Opium" (p. 302). Ultimately, the commission ruled in favour of the continuance of the trade, thus preserving this economic pillar of the raj.

The topic of this study is fascinating, and the research presented is indeed impressive, but the book as a whole suffers from several serious flaws. The most significant of these is a noticeable absence of effective editing. Many of the chapters in the book are divided into idiosyncratic subsections and give page after page of unprocessed and tedious information and statistics that risk losing the attention of even the most interested reader. The arrangement of some statistical information in six appendices is helpful, but unfortunately it does little to diminish the sense of information overkill that pervades most of the narrative of the book itself. For example, there is simply no need to relate the testimony, or give a biographical background of nearly every witness who testified before the opium commission. Chapters five and six, in particular, are little more than a rearranged and exhausting presentation of the commission's record of witness testimony. Additionally, the method of citation used (even as the rationale is explained in the preface) does not work effectively with historical sources, and the inclusion of lengthy parenthetical citations frequently inhibits the smooth flow of the narrative. It is regrettable that the author and his editors did not take the time to synthesize and condense these data and sources into a more compelling and readable narrative. Had this book been half as long it would have been twice as effective.

David A. Campion

Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon

Copyright Canadian Journal of History Dec 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

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