Rise Of Opium Essay

In the case of opium, the rise of opium consumption might be also due to changing societal needs. Centuries before the first opium war, opium was already widely used as a medicine and as an aphrodisiac. According to Gong Yingyan, the earliest Chinese records of the poppy plant were around the 8th century, when it was mainly used for visual appreciation. Its medicinal properties were first brought into China in the 13th century by Arabic-Islamic doctors. By the 14th century, opium was widely prescribed by Han Chinese doctors as a cure for various ailments, such as diarrhoea and cough. By the late 16th century, it was widely used as an ingredient for aphrodisiac. In fact, opium was even legalised, and even taxed. “Throughout this period opium in small amounts was coming into China on a fixed tariff as a medicinal drug; the tax was two qian per ten qin in 1589, and the assessment was raised to three qian in

Carl Trocki pointed out that in Southeast Asia, the Chinese coolies were heavily involved in the growth and consumption of opium. They did so because of the lack of medical facilities and therefore needed opium to help them relieve of their physical pain from malaria and other tropical diseases. While the research focus was on Southeast Asia, the Chinese in China also lacked medical facilities as well, and hence the same reason was applicable to China as it was to Southeast Asia. In fact, with the rise of modern medicine, improvements in medical treatments, differentiation in the types of drugs to treat the different kinds of illnesses, antibiotics such as penicillin to cure bacterial infection and hence the pain, demand for opium gradually died down in the 20th century. These showed that paying more attention to the demand-side of the equation, in particular providing viable alternatives to solving the aching physical pains or social issues that pushed people to consuming drugs, holds the key to solving a drug