View source for Opium

{{Short description|Dried latex of the opium poppy containing narcotic compounds}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Cs1 config|name-list-style=vanc}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2016}}
{{Use American English|date=March 2016}}
{{Infobox botanical product
|image         = Opium pod cut to demonstrate fluid extraction1.jpg
|caption       = Opium poppy seed pod exuding latex from a cut
|product       = Opium, opium gum, opium resin.
|plant         = ''[[Papaver somniferum]]''
|part          = [[Latex]] [[Capsule (fruit)|capsule]] [[seeds]]
|origin        = Uncertain, possibly [[Anatolia]],<ref name="Schiff" /> or Spain, southern France and northwestern Africa<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Papaver/ | title = The Pernicious Opium Poppy | author = Professor Arthur C. Gibson | publisher = [[University of California, Los Angeles]] | access-date = February 22, 2014 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131020165834/http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Papaver/ | archive-date = October 20, 2013 | df = mdy-all }}</ref>
|active        = {{flatlist|
* [[Morphine]]
* [[codeine]]
* [[noscapine]]
* [[papaverine]]
* [[thebaine]]
}}
|producers     = {{flatlist|
* [[Myanmar]]
* [[Afghanistan]]
* [[Colombia]]
* [[Laos]]
* [[Mexico]]
* [[India]]
* [[Pakistan]]
* [[Thailand]]
* [[Turkey]]
* [[China]]
* [[Australia]]
}}
|consumers    = Worldwide (#1: Iran)<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2010/1.2_The_global_heroin_market.pdf|title = The Global Heroin Market | date=October 2014}}</ref>
|wholesale    =
|retail       =
|legal_AU     = S8
|legal_BR     = A1
|legal_CA     = Schedule I
| legal_DE    = Anlage III
| legal_NZ    = Class B
|legal_UK     = Class A
|legal_US     = Schedule II
|legal_UN     = Narcotic Schedule I
|legal_status = Controlled unless and except for medical use under a license.
}}

'''Opium''' (also known as '''poppy tears''', or '''Lachryma papaveris''') is the dried [[latex]] obtained from the seed [[Capsule (fruit)|capsules]] of the opium poppy ''[[Papaver somniferum]]''.<ref name="DrugsCom">{{cite web|url=https://www.drugs.com/dict/opium.html|title=Opium definition|publisher=[[Drugs.com]]|access-date=February 28, 2015}}</ref> Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the [[analgesic]] [[alkaloid]] [[morphine]], which is processed chemically to produce [[heroin]] and other synthetic [[opioid]]s for medicinal use and for the [[illegal drug trade]]. Opium’s main [[psychoactive]] [[alkaloid]]s, primarily morphine, act on [[μ-opioid receptor]]s, causing [[analgesia]] and [[addiction]] with long-term use leading to tolerance, dependence, and increased [[cancer]] risk. The latex also contains the closely related [[opiate]]s [[codeine]] and [[thebaine]], and non-analgesic [[alkaloid]]s such as [[papaverine]] and [[noscapine]]. The traditional, labor-intensive method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off and dehydrated.

The English word for opium is [[loan word|borrowed]] from [[Latin]], which in turn comes from {{langx|grc|ὄπιον}} (''ópion''), a [[diminutive]] of ὀπός (''opós'', "juice of a plant").<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.etymonline.com/word/opium|title=opium &#124; Etymology of opium by etymonline|website=www.etymonline.com}}</ref> The word ''[[meconium]]'' (derived from the Greek for "opium-like", but now used to refer to [[newborn]] [[human feces|stool]]s) historically referred to related, weaker preparations made from other parts of the opium poppy or different species of poppies.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hon.ch/Dossier/MotherChild/labor_complications/birth_meconium.html|title=HON Mother & Child Glossary, Meconium|author=Simon O'Dochartaigh|work=hon.ch|access-date=April 4, 2016|archive-date=May 1, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210501220607/https://www.hon.ch/Dossier/MotherChild/labor_complications/birth_meconium.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> The [[Mediterranean]] region holds the earliest archaeological evidence of human use of opium poppies dating back to over 5000 BCE, with cultivation beginning around 3400 BCE in [[Mesopotamia]]. Opium was widely used for food, medicine, ritual, and as a painkiller throughout ancient civilizations including [[Greece]], [[Egypt]], and [[Islamic]] societies up to [[medieval]] times.<!--Per WP:CITELEAD, references are not needed in the lead if it is sourced in the body of the article.-->

The production methods have not significantly changed since ancient times. Through selective breeding of the ''Papaver somniferum'' plant, the content of the [[phenanthrene]] alkaloids morphine, codeine, and to a lesser extent thebaine has been greatly increased. In modern times, much of the thebaine, which often serves as the raw material for the synthesis for [[oxycodone]], [[hydrocodone]], [[hydromorphone]], and other [[semisynthesis|semisynthetic]] opiates, originates from extracting ''[[Papaver orientale]]'' or ''[[Papaver bracteatum]]''. Modern opium production, once widely prohibited, now involves large-scale cultivation—especially in [[Afghanistan]]—where it is harvested by scoring poppy pods to collect latex used for both illicit drugs and legal medicines, with recent [[Taliban]]-led reductions drastically cutting cultivation in Afghanistan by over 95%.

For the illegal drug trade, the [[morphine]] is extracted from the opium latex, reducing the bulk weight by 88%. It is then converted to [[heroin]] which is almost twice as potent,<ref name="Sawynok 1986">{{cite journal | author = Sawynok J | title = The therapeutic use of heroin: a review of the pharmacological literature | journal = Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology | volume = 64 | issue = 1 | pages = 1–6 | date = January 1986 | pmid = 2420426 | doi = 10.1139/y86-001 }}</ref> and increases the value by a similar factor. The reduced weight and bulk make it easier to smuggle.

== History ==
The [[Mediterranean Basin|Mediterranean region]] contains the earliest archeological evidence of human use; the oldest known seeds date back to more than 5000{{spaces}}BCE in the [[Neolithic]] age<ref name=Merlin>{{cite journal |last1=Merlin |first1=M. D. |title=Archaeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World |journal=Economic Botany |date=September 2003 |volume=57 |issue=3 |pages=295–323 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4256701 |access-date=May 31, 2022 |issn=0013-0001| jstor=4256701| doi=10.1663/0013-0001(2003)057[0295:aeftto]2.0.co;2|s2cid=30297486 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> with purposes such as food, [[anaesthetic]]s, and [[ritual]]. Evidence from [[ancient Greece]] indicates that opium was consumed in several ways, including inhalation of vapors, [[Suppository|suppositories]], [[Poultice|medical poultices]], and as a combination with [[Conium maculatum|hemlock]] for suicide.<ref name=Papadaki>{{cite web|url=https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1967-01-01_4_page003.html|title=The history of the poppy and of opium and their expansion in antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean area|last=PAPADAKI|first=P. G. KRITIKOS, S. P.|website=Unodc.org|publisher=UNODC- Bulletin on Narcotics – 1967 Issue 4 – 002|access-date=May 31, 2022}}</ref> Opium is mentioned in the most important [[History of medicine|medical]] texts of the ancient and medieval world, including the [[Ebers Papyrus]] and the writings of [[Dioscorides]], [[Galen]], and [[Avicenna]]. Widespread medical use of unprocessed opium continued through the [[American Civil War]] before giving way to [[morphine]] and its successors, which could be injected at a precisely controlled dosage.

=== Ancient use (pre-500 CE) ===
{{Quote box
 |quote  = A little of it, taken as much as a grain of ervum is a pain-easer, and a sleep-causer, and a digester...but being drank too much it hurts, making men lethargical, and it kills.
 |author = [[Dioscorides]]
 |source = Introduction to ''The Herbal of Dioscorides the Greek''
 |width=15%
}}
[[File:Malwapoppy.jpg|thumb|right|Poppy crop from the [[Malwa]] in India (probably ''Papaver somniferum'' var. ''album''<ref name="Schiff">{{cite news|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3833/is_200207/ai_n9107282/print |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071021021327/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3833/is_200207/ai_n9107282/print |url-status=dead |archive-date=October 21, 2007 |title=Opium and its alkaloids |author=Paul L. Schiff Jr. |year=2002 |access-date=May 8, 2007 |work=American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education }}</ref>)]]

Opium has been actively collected since approximately 3400{{spaces}}BCE.<ref name=Santella>{{cite book | title=Opium |author1=Santella, Thomas M. |author2=Triggle, D. J. | publisher=Facts On File, Incorporated | year=2009 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9BLfZSZHzgcC | page=8| isbn=978-1-4381-0213-9 }}</ref>

At least 17 finds of ''Papaver somniferum'' from [[Neolithic]] settlements have been reported throughout [[Switzerland]], [[Germany]], and [[Spain]], including the placement of large numbers of poppy seed capsules at a burial site (the ''Cueva de los Murciélagos'', or "Bat Cave", in Spain), which has been carbon-14 dated to 4200{{spaces}}BCE. Numerous finds of ''P. somniferum'' or ''P. setigerum'' from [[Bronze Age]] and [[Iron Age]] settlements have also been reported.<ref name=Carr>{{cite web|author=Suzanne Carr |title=MS thesis |url=http://www.oubliette.org.uk/Four.html |year=1995 |access-date=May 16, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091108155018/http://www.oubliette.org.uk/Four.html |archive-date=November 8, 2009 }} ''(citing Andrew Sherratt)''</ref> The first known cultivation of opium poppies was in [[Mesopotamia]], approximately 3400{{spaces}}BCE, by [[Sumer]]ians, who called the plant ''hul gil'', the "joy plant".<ref name="Brownstein">{{cite journal|author=M J Brownstein|title=A brief history of opiates, opioid peptides, and opioid receptors|journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America|date=June 15, 1993|volume=90|issue=12|pages=5391–5393 |pmc=46725 |doi=10.1073/pnas.90.12.5391|pmid=8390660|bibcode=1993PNAS...90.5391B|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="Frontline">{{cite web|author=PBS Frontline|title=The Opium Kings|website=[[PBS]]|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/etc/history.html|year=1997|access-date=May 16, 2007}}</ref> Tablets found at [[Nippur]], a Sumerian spiritual center south of [[Baghdad]], described the collection of poppy juice in the morning and its use in production of opium.<ref name="Schiff" /> Cultivation continued in the Middle East by the [[ancient Assyrians|Assyrians]], who also collected poppy juice in the morning after scoring the pods with an iron scoop; they called the juice ''aratpa-pal'', possibly the root of ''Papaver''.<ref name=anon>{{cite book |title=The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany |author=<!--No author credited in original work-->|date=1817 |publisher=Wm. H. Allen & Company |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VhgSo7NMGbYC |access-date=May 31, 2022 |language=en |chapter=Description of the Culture of the White Poppy and Preparation of Opium, as Practised in the Province of Bahar|volume=3}}</ref> Opium production continued under the [[Babylonians]] and [[Ancient Egypt|Egyptians]].

Opium was used with [[poison hemlock]] to put people quickly and painlessly to death. It was also used in medicine. ''[[Spongia somnifera]]'', sponges soaked in opium, were used during surgery.<ref name="Brownstein" /> The Egyptians cultivated ''opium thebaicum'' in famous poppy fields around 1300{{spaces}}BCE. Opium was traded from Egypt by the [[Phoenicia]]ns and [[Minoan civilization|Minoans]] to destinations around the [[Mediterranean Sea]], including Greece, [[Carthage]], and Europe. By 1100{{spaces}}BCE, opium was cultivated on [[Cyprus]], where surgical-quality knives were used to score the poppy pods, and opium was cultivated, traded, and smoked.<ref name="Kritikos">{{cite journal|title=The early history of the poppy and opium|author1=P. G. Kritikos |author2=S. P. Papadaki |journal=Journal of the Archaeological Society of Athens|date=January 1, 1967}}</ref> Opium was also mentioned after the [[Achaemenid Empire|Persian]] conquest of Assyria and Babylonian lands in the {{nowrap|6th century BC}}.<ref name="Schiff" />
[[File:Minoan praying women archmus Heraklion Crete Greece.jpg|thumb|“Goddess of Ecstasy” figurine from Crete, dated around the Late Bronze Age]]
From the earliest finds, opium has appeared to have ritual significance, and anthropologists have speculated ancient priests may have used the drug as a proof of healing power.<ref name="Brownstein" /> In Egypt, the use of opium was generally restricted to priests, magicians, and warriors, its invention is credited to Thoth, and it was said to have been given by Isis to Ra as treatment for a headache.<ref name="Schiff" /> A figureine of a goddess dated to around 1300 BCE from the Minoan period contains three hairpins shaped as poppy capsules, all of which contain slits that suggest the Cretans knew the method of extracting opium. Additionally, her smile and parting lips suggests that she may be in a state induced by the opium. This has influenced some scholars to call her the “goddess of ecstasy”.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Askitopoulou |first=Helen |last2=Ramoutsaki |first2=Ioanna A |last3=Konsolaki |first3=Eleni |date=2002-12-01 |title=Archaeological evidence on the use of opium in the Minoan world |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0531513102007690 |journal=International Congress Series |series=The history of anesthesia |volume=1242 |pages=23–29 |doi=10.1016/S0531-5131(02)00769-0 |issn=0531-5131}}</ref> 

Further evidence confirms the use of opium in the Mediterranean since the [[Late Bronze Age]] due to a number of small [[Lekythos|lekythi]] from various places in [[Crete]]. These lekythi are supposed to have contained pharmaceutical opium due to the shape of the jars being analogous to those of the poppy head. Additionally, each jar is decorated with vertical stripes that are very similar to the process of cutting into the poppy to extract the sap.<ref name=":02">{{Cite journal |last=Askitopoulou |first=Helen |last2=Ramoutsaki |first2=Ioanna A |last3=Konsolaki |first3=Eleni |date=2002-12-01 |title=Archaeological evidence on the use of opium in the Minoan world |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0531513102007690 |journal=International Congress Series |series=The history of anesthesia |volume=1242 |pages=23–29 |doi=10.1016/S0531-5131(02)00769-0 |issn=0531-5131}}</ref> There is further evidence for the use of opium during this era due to painted [[Pyxis (vessel)|pyxis]]. These would be decorated with painted poppy capsules and birds holding both poppy capsules and poppy stalks.<ref name=":02" />

Opium’s use in the [[History of the Mediterranean region|ancient Mediterranean]] world is well written about, with many authors discussing its uses. In [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greece,]] it was regarded as a magic and poisonous plant that was used in religious ceremonies. For initiates of the [[Demeter|cult of Demeter]] would most likely have taken opium.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Booth |first=Martin |title=Opium: a history |date=1998 |publisher=St. Martin's Griffin |isbn=978-0-312-20667-3 |series=Thomas Dunne books |location=New York}}</ref> This is due to the fact that it is said that Demeter ate the opium plant when her daughter, [[Persephone]], was abducted so that she could fall asleep and forget her grief.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |date=1968-08-01 |title=A History of Opium in Antiquity |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003046516307212 |journal=Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association (1961) |volume=8 |issue=8 |pages=446–447 |doi=10.1016/S0003-0465(16)30721-2 |issn=0003-0465}}</ref> For the citizens of [[Mycenae|Mycenea]], the opium poppy was an object of worship that was depicted on royal tombs.<ref name=":2" />

Eventually, the Greco-Roman world began to accept opium for its medicinal qualities too. [[Helen of Troy|Helen of Sparta]] is said to have used the “nepenthes drug” which some authors believe to be a concoction containing opium. Within archaeological sites of ancient [[Sparta]], there have been findings of pendants adorned with opium poppy capsules, affirming this belief.<ref name=":2" /> In the third century BCE, [[Theophrastus]] refers to it and discusses the process of obtaining the sap through crushing it, as the process of incising the poppy was lost until 40 CE. The process was relearned by [[Scribonius Largus]], physician to the [[Claudius|Emperor Claudius]], who writes about the process of obtaining opium. Both of these authors note that opium induced sleep and numbed pain, disregarding its effects on the brain.<ref name=":1" /> However, other writings regard it effects on the mind to be important, such as those from [[Diagoras of Melos]] and [[Erasistratus]], who believed that addiction to opium would harm the brain and body, urging others to not use it at all. [[Hippocrates]] believed that opium was a natural remedy that could cure certain ailments, but also advocated for its use sparingly.<ref name="Frontline2">{{cite web |author=PBS Frontline |year=1997 |title=The Opium Kings |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/etc/history.html |access-date=May 16, 2007 |website=[[PBS]]}}</ref> Additionally, certain ancient writers also believed poppy to be an important spice. Both [[Cato the Elder|Cato]] and [[Plautus|Plauto]] wrote about its use as a spice, with archaeological evidence from seed cakes being found in ancient Roman farmhouses supporting these claims<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bosi |first=Giovanna |last2=Mazzanti |first2=Marta Bandini |last3=Florenzano |first3=Assunta |last4=N’siala |first4=Isabella Massamba |last5=Pederzoli |first5=Aurora |last6=Rinaldi |first6=Rossella |last7=Torri |first7=Paola |last8=Mercuri |first8=Anna Maria |date=2011-07-01 |title=Seeds/fruits, pollen and parasite remains as evidence of site function: piazza Garibaldi – Parma (N Italy) in Roman and Mediaeval times |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440311000665 |journal=Journal of Archaeological Science |volume=38 |issue=7 |pages=1621–1633 |doi=10.1016/j.jas.2011.02.027 |issn=0305-4403}}</ref>. 

The Greek gods [[Hypnos]] (Sleep), [[Nyx]] (Night), and [[Thanatos]] (Death) were depicted wreathed in poppies or holding them. Poppies also frequently adorned statues of [[Apollo]], [[Asclepius]], [[Pluto (mythology)|Pluto]], [[Demeter]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Kybele]] and [[Isis]], symbolizing nocturnal oblivion.<ref name="Schiff" />

=== Islamic societies (500–1500 CE) ===
[[File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Een opium kit op Java. TMnr 60009390.jpg|thumb|left|Opium users in [[Java]] during the [[Dutch East Indies|Dutch colonial period]], {{circa|1870}}]]
As the power of the [[Roman Empire]] declined, the lands to the south and east of the Mediterranean Sea became incorporated into the [[Islamic Empire]]s. Some Muslims believe ''[[hadith]]s'', such as in ''[[Sahih Bukhari]]'', prohibit every intoxicating substance, though the use of intoxicants in medicine has been widely permitted by scholars.<ref name=Syed>{{cite web|title=Alcohol and Islam|author=Ibrahim B. Syed |author-link=Ibrahim B. Syed |url=http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles_101_150/alcohol_and_islam.htm |access-date=July 7, 2005}}</ref> [[Pedanius Dioscorides|Dioscorides']] five-volume ''[[De Materia Medica]]'', the precursor of [[pharmacopoeia]]s, remained in use (which was edited and improved in the Arabic versions<ref>{{cite web|title=Islamic Medical Manuscripts at the National Library of Medicine: a note on pharmaceutics|url=https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/pharmaceutics1.html|access-date=June 6, 2007}}</ref>) from the 1st to 16th centuries, and described opium and the wide range of its uses prevalent in the ancient world.<ref name=Berendes>{{cite web|title=De Materia Medica|language=de|author=Julius Berendes|year=1902|url=http://www.tiscalinet.ch/materiamedica/Mohn.htm|access-date=May 10, 2007 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070208230539/http://www.tiscalinet.ch/materiamedica/Mohn.htm |archive-date = February 8, 2007}}</ref>

[[File:Опиумоеды.jpg|thumb|''Opium-eaters'' by [[Vasily Vereshchagin]] depicts an opium den in [[Turkestan]], 1868]]
Between 400 and 1200 AD, Arab traders introduced opium to China, and to India by 700 AD.<ref name=drugs/><ref name="Schiff" /><ref name="Frontline" /><ref name="Trocki" /> The physician [[Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi]] of [[Persian people|Persian]] origin ("Rhazes", 845–930 CE) maintained a laboratory and school in [[Baghdad]], and was a student and critic of [[Galen]]; he made use of opium in anesthesia and recommended its use for the treatment of melancholy in ''Fi ma-la-yahdara al-tabib'', "In the Absence of a Physician", a home medical manual directed toward ordinary citizens for self-treatment if a doctor was not available.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.answers.com/topic/al-razi|title=Answers.com: al-Razi|website=[[Answers.com]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Razi.html|date=January 2002|title=Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (841–926)|newspaper=Saudi Aramco World|access-date=January 12, 2008}}</ref>

The renowned [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] [[ophthalmology|ophthalmologic]] surgeon [[Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi]] ("Abulcasis", 936–1013 CE) relied on opium and [[Mandragora officinarum|mandrake]] as surgical anesthetics and wrote a treatise, ''[[al-Tasrif]]'', that influenced medical thought well into the 16th century.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ummah.com/science/viewscfeature1.php?scfid=36&scTopicID=6|title=El Zahrawi – Father Of Surgery|access-date=May 4, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927013042/http://www.ummah.com/science/viewscfeature1.php?scfid=36&scTopicID=6|archive-date=September 27, 2007|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

The Persian physician [[Avicenna|Abū 'Alī al-Husayn ibn Sina]] ("Avicenna") described opium as the most powerful of the stupefacients, in comparison to mandrake and other highly effective herbs, in ''[[The Canon of Medicine]]''. The text lists medicinal effects of opium, such as analgesia, hypnosis, antitussive effects, gastrointestinal effects, cognitive effects, respiratory depression, neuromuscular disturbances, and sexual dysfunction. It also refers to opium's potential as a poison. Avicenna describes several methods of delivery and recommendations for doses of the drug.<ref name=Heydari>{{cite journal|title=Medicinal aspects of opium as described in Avicenna's Canon of Medicine|journal=Acta medico-historica Adriatica |date=2013 |pmid=23883087 |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=101–12 |last1=Heydari |first1=M|last2=Hashempur|first2=M. H.|last3=Zargaran|first3=A}}</ref> This classic text was translated into Latin in 1175 and later into many other languages and remained authoritative until the 19th century.<ref name=Smith>{{cite journal |author=Smith RD |title=Avicenna and the Canon of Medicine: a millennial tribute |journal=The Western Journal of Medicine |volume=133 |issue=4 |pages=367–70 |date=October 1980 |pmid=7051568 |pmc=1272342 }}</ref> [[Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu]] used opium in the 14th-century Ottoman Empire to treat [[migraine]] headaches, [[sciatica]], and other painful ailments.<ref name=Ganidagli>{{cite journal |last1=Ganidagli |first1=Suleyman |last2=Cengiz |first2=Mustafa |last3=Aksoy |first3=Sahin |last4=Verit |first4=Ayhan |title=Approach to painful disorders by Şerefeddin Sabuncuoğlu in the fifteenth century Ottoman period. |journal=Anesthesiology |date=January 2004 |volume=100 |issue=1 |pages=165–9 |doi=10.1097/00000542-200401000-00026 |pmid=14695738 |url=https://pubs.asahq.org/anesthesiology/article/100/1/165/173/Approach-to-Painful-Disorders-by-Serefeddin |access-date=31 May 2022 |issn=1528-1175|s2cid=27900838|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

=== Reintroduction to Western medicine ===
[[File:Canons of medicine.JPG|thumb|right|Latin translation of [[Avicenna]]'s ''Canon of Medicine'', 1483]]
Manuscripts of [[Pseudo-Apuleius]]'s 5th-century work from the 10th and 11th centuries refer to the use of wild poppy ''[[Papaver agreste]]'' or ''[[Papaver rhoeas]]'' (identified as ''P. silvaticum'') instead of ''P. somniferum'' for inducing sleep and relieving pain.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://collecties.meermanno.nl/handschriften/search?SearchString=papaver|title=Pseudo-Apuleius: Papaver|access-date=June 15, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928141837/http://collecties.meermanno.nl/handschriften/search?SearchString=papaver|archive-date=September 28, 2007|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

The use of [[Paracelsus]]' [[laudanum]] was introduced to Western medicine in 1527, when Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, better known by the name Paracelsus, claimed (dubiously) to have returned from wanderings in Arabia with a famous sword, within the pommel of which he kept "Stones of Immortality" compounded from opium thebaicum, citrus juice, and "quintessence of gold".<ref name="Frontline" /><ref name="nzepc.auckland.ac.nz">{{cite web|url=http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/young/paracelsus.asp|title=Paracelsus: the philosopher's stone made flesh|access-date=May 4, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/04/18/devils_doctor/|title=The devil's doctor|date=April 18, 2006 |access-date=May 4, 2007}}</ref> The name "Paracelsus" was a pseudonym signifying him the equal or better of [[Aulus Cornelius Celsus]], whose text, which described the use of opium or a similar preparation, had recently been translated and reintroduced to medieval Europe.<ref name=paracelsus>{{cite web|title=PARACELSUS, Five Hundred Years: Three American Exhibits|url=https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/paracelsus/paracelsus_1.html|access-date=June 6, 2007}}</ref> ''[[The Canon of Medicine]]'', the standard medical textbook that Paracelsus burned in a public bonfire three weeks after being appointed professor at the [[University of Basel]], also described the use of opium, though many Latin translations were of poor quality.<ref name="nzepc.auckland.ac.nz" /> ''[[Laudanum]]'' was originally the 16th-century term for a medicine associated with a particular physician that was widely well-regarded, but became standardized as "[[tincture]] of opium", a solution of opium in [[ethanol]], which Paracelsus has been credited with developing.<ref name=drugs/> During his lifetime, Paracelsus was viewed as an adventurer who challenged the theories and mercenary motives of contemporary medicine with dangerous chemical therapies, but his therapies marked a turning point in Western medicine. In the 1660s, laudanum was recommended for pain, sleeplessness, and diarrhea by [[Thomas Sydenham]],<ref name=Harding>{{cite web|url=http://drugs.uta.edu/laudanum.html|author1=Stephen Harding|author2=Lee Ann Olivier|author3=Olivera Jokic|title=Victorians' Secret: Victorian Substance Abuse|access-date=May 2, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070531225628/http://drugs.uta.edu/laudanum.html|archive-date=May 31, 2007|df=mdy-all}}</ref> the renowned "father of English medicine" or "English Hippocrates", to whom is attributed the quote, "Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium."<ref name=Enersen>{{cite web|url=http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1989.html|author=Ole Daniel Enersen|title=Thomas Sydenham|access-date=May 2, 2007}}</ref> Use of opium as a cure-all was reflected in the formulation of [[mithridatium]] described in the 1728 ''[[Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences|Chambers Cyclopedia]]'', which included true opium in the mixture.

Eventually, laudanum became readily available and extensively used by the 18th century in Europe, especially England.<ref name=Lomax>{{cite journal |last1=Lomax |first1=Elizabeth |title=The Uses and Abuses Of Opiates In Nineteenth-Century England |journal=Bulletin of the History of Medicine |date=1973 |volume=47 |issue=2 |pages=167–176 |jstor=44447528 |pmid=4584236 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44447528 |access-date=May 31, 2022 |issn=0007-5140}}</ref> Compared to other chemicals available to 18th century regular physicians, opium was a benign alternative to arsenic, mercury, or emetics, and it was remarkably successful in alleviating a wide range of ailments. Due to the constipation often produced by the consumption of opium, it was one of the most effective treatments for cholera, dysentery, and diarrhea. As a cough suppressant, opium was used to treat bronchitis, tuberculosis, and other respiratory illnesses. Opium was additionally prescribed for rheumatism and insomnia.<ref name=Aurin>{{Cite journal|last=Aurin|first=Marcus|date=January 1, 2000|title=Chasing the Dragon: The Cultural Metamorphosis of Opium in the United States, 1825–1935|jstor=649506|journal=Medical Anthropology Quarterly|volume=14|issue=3|pages=414–441|pmid=11036586|doi=10.1525/maq.2000.14.3.414}}</ref> Medical textbooks even recommended its use by people in good health, to "optimize the internal equilibrium of the human body".<ref name=drugs/>

During the 18th century, opium was found to be a good remedy for nervous disorders. Due to its sedative and tranquilizing properties, it was used to quiet the minds of those with psychosis, help with people who were considered insane, and also to help treat patients with insomnia.<ref name="KramerJohn">{{cite journal | author = Kramer John C | year = 1979 | title = Opium Rampant: Medical Use, Misuse and Abuse in Britain and the West in the 17th and 18th Centuries | journal = British Journal of Addiction | volume = 74 | issue = 4| pages = 377–389 | doi=10.1111/j.1360-0443.1979.tb01367.x| pmid = 396938 }}</ref> However, despite its medicinal values in these cases, it was noted that in cases of psychosis, it could cause anger or depression, and due to the drug's euphoric effects, it could cause depressed patients to become more depressed after the effects wore off because they would get used to being high.<ref name="KramerJohn" />

The standard medical use of opium persisted well into the 19th century. US president [[William Henry Harrison]] was treated with opium in 1841, and in the [[American Civil War]], the Union Army used 175,000&nbsp;lb (80,000&nbsp;kg) of opium tincture and powder and about 500,000 opium pills.<ref name="Schiff" /> During this time of popularity, users called opium "God's Own Medicine".<ref>{{cite web|author=Donna Young|date=April 15, 2007|url=http://www.ashp.org/s_ashp/article_news.asp?CID=167&DID=2024&id=19461|title=Scientists Examine Pain Relief and Addiction|access-date=June 6, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071206030522/http://www.ashp.org/s_ashp/article_news.asp?CID=167&DID=2024&id=19461|archive-date=December 6, 2007|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

One reason for the increase in opiate consumption in the United States during the 19th century was the prescribing and dispensing of legal opiates by physicians and pharmacists to women with "female complaints" (mostly to relieve menstrual pain and [[Female hysteria|hysteria]]).<ref name=Aurin /> Because opiates were viewed as more humane than punishment or restraint, they were often used to treat the mentally ill. Between 150,000 and 200,000 opiate addicts lived in the United States in the late 19th century and between two-thirds and three-quarters of these addicts were women.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nida.nih.gov/PDF/DARHW/033-052_Kandall.pdf |title=Drug Addiction Research and the Health of Women – pg. 33–52 |access-date=March 21, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080822032249/http://www.nida.nih.gov/PDF/DARHW/033-052_Kandall.pdf |archive-date=August 22, 2008 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Opium addiction in the later 19th century received a hereditary definition. Dr. George Beard in 1869 proposed his theory of [[neurasthenia]], a hereditary nervous system deficiency that could predispose an individual to addiction. Neurasthenia was increasingly tied in medical rhetoric to the "nervous exhaustion" suffered by many a white-collar worker in the increasingly hectic and industrialized U.S. life—the most likely potential clients of physicians.{{Citation needed|date=March 2021}}

=== Recreational use in Europe, the Middle East and the US (11th to 19th centuries) ===
[[File:The Opium Seller (W. Müller).jpg|thumb|right|An artist's view of an Ottoman opium seller]]
Soldiers returning home from the [[Crusades]] in the 11th to 13th century brought opium with them.<ref name=drugs>{{cite book|author=Philip Robson|title=Forbidden Drugs|url=https://archive.org/details/forbiddendrugs0000robs|url-access=registration|year=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-262955-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/forbiddendrugs0000robs/page/161 161]}}</ref> Opium is said to have been used for recreational purposes from the 14th century onwards in Muslim societies. Ottoman and European testimonies confirm that from the 16th to the 19th centuries Anatolian opium was eaten in Constantinople as much as it was exported to Europe.<ref>{{cite web |title=Why a Medieval Woman Had Lapis Lazuli Hidden in Her Teeth |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/the-woman-with-lapis-lazuli-in-her-teeth/579760/ |first=Sarah |last=Zhang |publisher=[[The Atlantic]] |date=January 9, 2019 |access-date=May 10, 2020 }}</ref> In 1573, for instance, a Venetian visitor to the Ottoman Empire observed many of the Turkish natives of Constantinople regularly drank a "certain black water made with opium" that makes them feel good, but to which they become so addicted, if they try to go without, they will "quickly die".<ref>Garzoni, Costantino. 1840 [1573]. "Relazione dell'impero Ottomano del senatore Costantino Garzoni stato all'ambascieria di Costantinopoli nel 1573". In Le relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, serie III, volume I, ed. Eugenio Albèri. Firenze: Clio, p. 398</ref> From drinking it, dervishes claimed the drugs bestowed them with visionary glimpses of future happiness.<ref>{{cite journal | author = Hamarneh Sami | year = 1972 | title = Pharmacy in medieval Islam and the history of drug addiction | journal = Medical History | volume = 16 | issue = 3| pages = 226–237 | pmc=1034978 | pmid=4595520 | doi=10.1017/s0025727300017725}}</ref> Indeed, the Ottoman Empire supplied the West with opium long before China and India.<ref>Michot, Yahya. ''L'opium et le café. Traduction d'un texte arabe anonyme et exploration de l'opiophagie ottomane'' (Beirut: Albouraq, 2008) {{ISBN|978-2-84161-397-7}}</ref>

Extensive textual and pictorial sources also show that poppy cultivation and opium consumption were widespread in [[Safavid]] Iran<ref>Matthee, Rudi. ''The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900'' (Washington: Mage Publishers, 2005), pp. 97–116 {{ISBN|0-934211-64-7}}. Van de Wijngaart, G., "Trading in Dreams", in P. Faber & al. (eds.), ''Dreaming of Paradise: Islamic Art from the Collection of the Museum of Ethnology'', Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Martial & Snoeck, 1993, p. 186-191.</ref> and [[Mughal Empire|Mughal]] India.<ref>Habighorst, Ludwig V., Reichart, Peter A., Sharma, Vijay, ''Love for Pleasure: Betel, Tobacco, Wine and Drugs in Indian Miniatures'' (Koblenz: Ragaputra Edition, 2007)</ref>

==== England ====
In England, opium fulfilled a "critical" role, as it did other societies, in addressing multifactorial [[pain]], [[cough]], [[dysentery]], [[diarrhea]], as argued by [[Virginia Berridge]].<ref name=Dikotter>{{Cite book|last=Dikotter|first=Frank|title=Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China|publisher=Hurst|year=2004|isbn=978-0-226-14905-9|page=3}}</ref> A medical panacea of the 19th century, "any respectable person" could purchase a range of hashish pastes and (later) morphine with complementary injection kit.<ref name=Dikotter/>

[[Thomas De Quincey]]'s ''[[Confessions of an English Opium-Eater]]'' (1822), one of the first and most famous [[Opium and Romanticism|literary accounts of opium addiction]] written from the point of view of an addict, details the pleasures and dangers of the drug. In the book, it is not Ottoman, nor Chinese, addicts about whom he writes, but English opium users: "I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Confessions of an English Opium-Eater|last=de Quincey|first=Thomas|year=1821|page=188|title-link=Confessions of an English Opium-Eater}}</ref> De Quincey writes about the great English Romantic poet [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] (1772–1834), whose "[[Kubla Khan]]" is also widely considered to be a poem of the opium experience. Coleridge began using opium in 1791 after developing [[jaundice]] and [[rheumatic fever]], and became a full addict after a severe attack of the disease in 1801, requiring 80–100 drops of [[laudanum]] daily.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Hubble D|date=October 1957|title=Opium Addiction and English Literature|journal=[[Medical History (journal)|Medical History]]|volume=1|issue=4|pages=323–35|doi=10.1017/s0025727300021505|pmc=1034310|pmid=13476921}}</ref>

===China===
==== Recreational use in China ====
{{See also|History of opium in China|Opium den}}
[[File:中國人服食鴉片圖.PNG|thumb|An opium den in 18th-century China.]]
The earliest clear description of the use of opium as a [[recreational drug]] in China came from Xu Boling, who wrote in 1483 that opium was "mainly used to aid masculinity, strengthen sperm and regain vigor", and that it "enhances the art of alchemists, sex and court ladies". He also described an expedition sent by the [[Ming dynasty]] [[Chenghua Emperor]] in 1483 to procure opium for a price "equal to that of gold" in [[Hainan]], [[Fujian]], [[Zhejiang]], [[Sichuan]] and [[Shaanxi]], where it is close to the western lands of [[Western Regions|Xiyu]]. A century later, [[Li Shizhen]] listed standard medical uses of opium in his renowned ''[[Compendium of Materia Medica]]'' (1578), but also wrote that "lay people use it for the art of sex," in particular the ability to "arrest seminal emission". This association of opium with sex continued in China until the end of the 19th century.

Opium smoking began as a privilege of the elite and remained a great luxury into the early 19th century. However, by 1861, [[Wang Tao (19th century)|Wang Tao]] wrote that opium was used even by rich peasants, and even a small village without a rice store would have a shop where opium was sold.<ref name="Zheng">{{cite journal|author=Yangwen Zheng|title=The Social Life of Opium in China, 1483–1999|journal=Modern Asian Studies|volume=37|issue=1|pages=1–39|year=2003|doi=10.1017/S0026749X0300101X|s2cid=146582691}}</ref>

Recreational use of opium was part of a civilized and mannered ritual, akin to an [[East Asian tea ceremony]], prior to the extensive prohibitions that came later.<ref name=Dikotter/> In places of gathering, often tea shops, or a person's home servings of opium were offered as a form of greeting and politeness. Often served with tea (in China) and with specific and fine utensils and beautifully carved wooden pipes. The wealthier the smoker, the finer and more expensive material used in ceremony.<ref name=Dikotter /> The image of seedy underground, destitute smokers were often generated by anti-opium narratives and became a more accurate image of opium use following the effects of large scale opium prohibition in the 1880s.<ref name=Dikotter/>

==== Prohibitions in China ====
Opium prohibition in China began in 1729, yet was followed by nearly two centuries of increasing opium use.  [[Destruction of opium at Humen|A massive destruction of opium]] by an emissary of the Chinese [[Daoguang Emperor]] in an attempt to stop opium smuggling by the British led to the [[First Opium War]] (1839{{ndash}}1842), in which Britain defeated China. After 1860, opium use continued to increase with widespread domestic production in China. By 1905, an estimated 25 percent of the male population were regular consumers of the drug. Recreational use of opium elsewhere in the world remained rare into late in the 19th century, as indicated by ambivalent reports of opium usage.<ref name=Dikotter/> In 1906, 41,000 tons were produced, but because 39,000 tons of that year's opium were consumed in China, overall usage in the rest of the world was much lower.<ref name="McCoy opium" /> These figures from 1906 have been criticized as overestimates.<ref name="Rewriting history">[http://www.ungassondrugs.org/images/stories/brief26.pdf Rewriting history, A response to the 2008 World Drug Report], Transnational Institute, June 2008</ref>

[[File:Opium smokers China.gif|thumb|left|A Chinese opium house; photographed in 1902]]
Smoking of opium came on the heels of [[tobacco]] smoking and may have been encouraged by a brief [[smoking ban|ban on the smoking]] of tobacco by the Ming emperor. The prohibition ended in 1644 with the coming of the [[Qing dynasty]], which encouraged smokers to mix in increasing amounts of opium.<ref name="Schiff" /> In 1705, [[Wang Shizhen (poet)|Wang Shizhen]] wrote, "nowadays, from nobility and gentlemen down to slaves and women, all are addicted to tobacco." Tobacco in that time was frequently mixed with other herbs (this continues with [[clove cigarettes]] to the modern day), and opium was one component in the mixture. Tobacco mixed with opium was called ''[[madak]]'' (or ''madat'') and became popular throughout China and its seafaring trade partners (such as [[Taiwan]], [[Java]], and the [[Philippines]]) in the 17th century.<ref name="Zheng" /> In 1712, [[Engelbert Kaempfer]] described [[Substance use disorder|addiction]] to ''madak'': "No commodity throughout the [[East Indies|Indies]] is retailed with greater profit by the [[Jakarta|Batavians]] than opium, which [its] users cannot do without, nor can they come by it except it be brought by the ships of the Batavians from [[Bengal]] and [[Coromandel Coast|Coromandel]]."<ref name="Trocki" />

Fueled in part by the 1729 ban on ''madak'', which at first effectively exempted pure opium as a potentially medicinal product, the smoking of pure opium became more popular in the 18th century. In 1736, the smoking of pure opium was described by [[Huang Shujing]], involving a pipe made from bamboo rimmed with silver, stuffed with palm slices and hair, fed by a clay bowl in which a globule of molten opium was held over the flame of an oil lamp. This elaborate procedure, requiring the maintenance of pots of opium at just the right temperature for a globule to be scooped up with a needle-like skewer for smoking, formed the basis of a craft of "paste-scooping" by which servant girls could become prostitutes as the opportunity arose.<ref name="Zheng" />

==== Chinese diaspora in the West ====
The [[Chinese Diaspora]] in the West (1800s to 1949) first began to flourish during the 19th century due to famine and political upheaval, as well as rumors of wealth to be had outside of [[Southeast Asia]]. Chinese emigrants to cities such as [[San Francisco]], [[London]], and [[New York City]] brought with them the Chinese manner of opium smoking, and the social traditions of the [[opium den]].<ref name="sfmuseum.org">{{cite news |url=http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist9/cook.html|title=San Francisco's Old Chinatown|author=Commissioner Jesse B. Cook |author-link=Jesse B. Cook |date=June 1931|newspaper=San Francisco Police and Peace Officers' Journal|access-date=September 22, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://immigrants.harpweek.com/chineseamericans/Items/Item061L.htm|title=American Opium Smokers|author=H.H. Kane, M.D.|date=September 24, 1881|access-date=September 22, 2007}}</ref> The [[Non-resident Indian and person of Indian origin|Indian Diaspora]] distributed opium-eaters in the same way, and both social groups survived as "[[lascar]]s" (seamen) and "[[coolie]]s" (manual laborers). French sailors provided another major group of opium smokers, having gotten the habit while in [[French Indochina]], where the drug was promoted and monopolized by the colonial government as a source of revenue.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/e1910/frenchnavyopium.htm|title=Opium degrading the French Navy|date=April 27, 1913|access-date=September 22, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/book/21.htm|title=The politics of heroin in Southeast Asia|author=Alfred W. McCoy|author-link=Alfred W. McCoy|year=1972|access-date=September 24, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071007015442/http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/book/21.htm|archive-date=October 7, 2007|df=mdy-all}}</ref> Among white Europeans, opium was more frequently consumed as [[laudanum]] or in [[patent medicine]]s. Britain's All-India Opium Act of 1878 formalized ethnic restrictions on the use of opium, limiting recreational opium sales to registered Indian opium-eaters and Chinese opium-smokers only and prohibiting its sale to workers from Burma.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/opium_india.cfm|title=Opium and the British Indian Empire|author=John Richards|date=May 23, 2001|access-date=September 24, 2007}}</ref> Likewise, in San Francisco, Chinese immigrants were permitted to smoke opium, so long as they refrained from doing so in the presence of whites.<ref name="sfmuseum.org" />

Because of the low social status of immigrant workers, contemporary writers and media had little trouble portraying opium dens as seats of vice, [[sexual slavery#White slavery|white slavery]], gambling, knife- and revolver-fights, and a source for drugs causing deadly overdoses, with the potential to addict and corrupt the white population. By 1919, anti-Chinese riots attacked [[Limehouse]], the [[Chinatown, London|Chinatown of London]]. Chinese men were deported for playing [[keno]] and sentenced to hard labor for opium possession. Due to this, both the immigrant population and the social use of opium fell into decline.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/templates/news/detail.cfm?newsid=7262|publisher=Tower Hamlets Newsletter|title=When a woman ruled Chinatown|author=John Rennie|date=March 26, 2007|access-date=May 12, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100210150255/http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/templates/news/detail.cfm?newsid=7262 <!-- Bot retrieved archive -->|archive-date=February 10, 2010|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lascars.co.uk/plafeb1931.html|title=Lascars in the port of London|author=J.P. Jones|date=February 1931|publisher=P.L.A. Monthly|access-date=May 12, 2007}}</ref> Yet despite lurid literary accounts to the contrary, 19th-century London was not a hotbed of opium smoking. The total lack of photographic evidence of opium smoking in Britain, as opposed to the relative abundance of historical photos depicting opium smoking in North America and France, indicates the infamous [[Limehouse]] opium-smoking scene was little more than fantasy on the part of British writers of the day, who were intent on scandalizing their readers while drumming up the threat of the "yellow peril".<ref name="opiummuseum">[http://www.opiummuseum.com/index.pl?pics&67 "Opium in the West"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171007124448/http://www.opiummuseum.com/index.pl?pics&67 |date=October 7, 2017 }}. ''[http://www.opiummuseum.com/ Opium Museum].'' 2007. Retrieved on September 21, 2007.</ref><ref name="eastlondonhistory">[http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/brilliant-chang/ "Brilliant, Chang! « London Particulars"]. Retrieved on October 3, 2010.</ref>

==== Prohibition and conflict in China ====
{{Main|Destruction of opium at Humen|Opium Wars|History of opium in China}}
{{See also|Japanese opium policy in Taiwan (1895–1945)}}
{{More citations needed section|date=February 2021}}
[[File:Destruction of opium in 1839.jpg|thumb|[[Destruction of opium at Humen]], June 1839]]

A large scale opium prohibition attempt began in 1729, when the [[Qing dynasty|Qing]] [[Yongzheng Emperor]], disturbed by ''[[madak]]'' smoking at court and carrying out the government's role of upholding [[Confucian]] virtues, officially prohibited the sale of opium, except for a small amount for medicinal purposes. The ban punished sellers and [[opium den]] keepers, but not users of the drug.<ref name="Trocki" /> Opium was banned completely in 1799, and this prohibition continued until 1860.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.goldentrianglepark.org/swf/timeline.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090420193731/http://www.goldentrianglepark.org/swf/timeline.htm|url-status=usurped|archive-date=April 20, 2009|title=Opium timeline|publisher=The Golden Triangle|access-date=September 13, 2009}}</ref>

[[File:William John Huggins - The opium ships at Lintin, China, 1824.jpg|thumb|left|British opium ships]]

During the Qing dynasty, China opened itself to foreign trade under the [[Canton System]] through the port of [[Guangzhou]] (Canton), with traders from the [[East India Company]] visiting the port by the 1690s. Due to the growing British demand for Chinese tea and the Chinese Emperor's lack of interest in British commodities other than silver, British traders resorted to trade in opium as a high-value commodity for which China was not self-sufficient. The English traders had been purchasing small amounts of opium from India for trade since [[Ralph Fitch]] first visited in the mid-16th century.<ref name="Trocki" /> Trade in opium was standardized, with production of balls of raw opium, {{convert|1.1-1.6|kg|abbr=on}}, 30% water content, wrapped in poppy leaves and petals, and shipped in chests of {{convert|60–65|kg|abbr=on}} (one [[picul]]).<ref name="Trocki" /> Chests of opium were sold in auctions in [[Kolkata|Calcutta]] with the understanding that the independent purchasers would then smuggle it into China.

China had a positive balance sheet in trading with the British, which led to a decrease of the British silver stocks. Therefore, the British tried to encourage Chinese opium use to enhance their balance, and they delivered it from Indian provinces under British control. In India, its cultivation, as well as the manufacture and traffic to China, were subject to the [[British East India Company]] (BEIC), as a strict monopoly of the British government.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bihargatha.in/early-agriculture-based-enterprenureships/opeum-factories |title=Opium Factories of Bihar – Bihargatha |publisher=Bihargatha.in |access-date=October 7, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110910142330/http://www.bihargatha.in/early-agriculture-based-enterprenureships/opeum-factories |archive-date=September 10, 2011 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref> There was an extensive and complicated system of BEIC agencies involved in the supervision and management of opium production and distribution in India. Bengal opium was highly prized, commanding twice the price of the domestic Chinese product, which was regarded as inferior in quality.<ref name="McCoy opium">{{cite web|url=http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/opi010.htm |title=Opium History, 1858 to 1940 |author=Alfred W. McCoy |access-date=May 4, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070404134938/http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/opi010.htm |archive-date=April 4, 2007 }}</ref>

[[File:British ships in Canton.jpg|thumb|British assault on [[Guangzhou|Canton]] during the [[First Opium War]], May 1841]]
Some competition came from the newly independent United States, which began to compete in Guangzhou, selling Turkish opium in the 1820s. Portuguese traders also brought opium from the independent Malwa states of western India, although by 1820, the British were able to restrict this trade by charging "pass duty" on the opium when it was forced to pass through Bombay to reach an ''[[entrepot]]''.<ref name="Trocki" />
Despite drastic penalties and continued prohibition of opium until 1860, opium smuggling rose steadily from 200 chests per year under the [[Yongzheng Emperor]] to 1,000 under the [[Qianlong Emperor]], 4,000 under the [[Jiaqing Emperor]], and 30,000 under the [[Daoguang Emperor]].<ref>Wertz, Richard R. [http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/06dat/bio.2qin.html "Qing Era (1644–1912)"]. ''[[ibiblio|iBiblio]].'' 1998. Retrieved on September 21, 2007.</ref> This illegal sale of opium, which has been called "the most long continued and systematic international crime of modern times",<ref>John K. Fairbanks, "The Creation of the Treaty System' in John K. Fairbanks, ed. ''The Cambridge History of China'', vol. 10 Part 1 (Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 213. ''cited in'' {{cite news |author=John Newsinger |date=October 1997 |title=Britain's opium wars – fact and myth about the opium trade in the East |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n5_v49/ai_20039205 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060213222236/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n5_v49/ai_20039205 |archive-date=2006-02-13 |newspaper=Monthly Review}}</ref> became one of the world's most valuable single commodity trades, and between 1814 and 1850, sucked out 11 percent of China's money supply.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bradley |first=James |title=The Imperial Cruise, a Secret History of Empire and War |year=2009 |publisher=Little, Brown |isbn=978-0316049665 |chapter=Chapter 10 |pages=274–275 |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/imperialcruisese0000brad/page/274}}</ref>

In response to the ever-growing number of Chinese people becoming addicted to opium, the Qing [[Daoguang Emperor]] took strong action to halt the smuggling of opium, including the seizure of cargo. In 1838, the Chinese Commissioner [[Lin Zexu]] [[Destruction of opium at Humen|destroyed]] 20,000 chests of opium (approximately 2,660,000 pounds) in Guangzhou in a river.<ref name="Trocki" /> Given that a chest of opium was worth nearly {{US$|1,000|link=yes}} in 1800, this was a substantial economic loss. The British queen [[Victoria of the United Kingdom|Victoria]], not willing to replace the cheap opium with costly silver, began the [[First Opium War]] in 1840, the British winning Hong Kong and trade concessions in the first of a series of [[Unequal Treaties]].{{Citation needed|date=December 2022}}

The opium trade incurred intense enmity from the later British Prime Minister [[William Ewart Gladstone]].<ref name="Lodwick2015">{{cite book|author=Kathleen L. Lodwick|title=Crusaders Against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874–1917|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DrAeBgAAQBAJ&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PA86|date=February 5, 2015|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|isbn=978-0-8131-4968-4|pages=86–}}</ref> As a member of Parliament, Gladstone called it "most infamous and atrocious" referring to the opium trade between China and British India in particular.<ref name="Chouvy2009">{{cite book|author=Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy|title=Opium: Uncovering the Politics of the Poppy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qGl4TN_qIsgC&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PA9|year=2009|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-05134-8|pages=9–}}</ref> Gladstone was fiercely against both of the [[Opium Wars]] Britain waged in China in the [[First Opium War]] initiated in 1840 and the [[Second Opium War]] initiated in 1857, denounced British violence against Chinese, and was ardently opposed to the British trade in opium to China.<ref name="QuinaultWindscheffel2013">{{cite book|author1=Dr Roland Quinault|author2=Dr Ruth Clayton Windscheffel|author3=Mr Roger Swift|title=William Gladstone: New Studies and Perspectives|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hve4IOulDlwC&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PT238|date=July 28, 2013|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-1-4094-8327-4|pages=238–}}</ref> Gladstone lambasted it as "[[Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Palmerston's]] Opium War" and said that he felt "in dread of the judgments of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China" in May 1840.<ref name="Foxcroft2013">{{cite book|author=Ms Louise Foxcroft|title=The Making of Addiction: The 'Use and Abuse' of Opium in Nineteenth-Century Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VPosEno3uNYC&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PA66|date=June 28, 2013|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-1-4094-7984-0|pages=66–}}</ref> A famous speech was made by Gladstone in Parliament against the [[First Opium War]].<ref name="HanesSanello2004">{{cite book|author1=William Travis Hanes|author2=Frank Sanello|title=Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jYmFAAAAQBAJ&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PA78|year=2004|publisher=Sourcebooks, Inc.|isbn=978-1-4022-0149-3|pages=78–}}</ref><ref name="IIISanello2004">{{cite book|author1=W. Travis Hanes III|author2=Frank Sanello|title=The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lXiiAAAAQBAJ&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PT88|date=February 1, 2004|publisher=Sourcebooks|isbn=978-1-4022-5205-1|pages=88–}}</ref> Gladstone criticized it as "a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace".<ref name="Fay2000">{{cite book|author=Peter Ward Fay|title=The Opium War, 1840–1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by which They Forced Her Gates Ajar|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EgSs61pjvS8C&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PT290|date=November 9, 2000|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-8078-6136-3|pages=290–}}</ref> His hostility to opium stemmed from the effects of opium brought upon his sister Helen.<ref name="Isba2006">{{cite book|author=Anne Isba|title=Gladstone and Women|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gaxDs8_oz_QC&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PA224|date=August 24, 2006|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-1-85285-471-3|pages=224–}}</ref> Due to the First Opium war brought on by [[Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Palmerston]], there was initial reluctance to join the government of Peel on part of Gladstone before 1841.<ref name="Bebbington1993">{{cite book|author=David William Bebbington|title=William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jEzV7PYYe5kC&q=William+Gladstone+opium&pg=PA108|year=1993|publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing|isbn=978-0-8028-0152-4|pages=108–}}</ref>

[[File:A busy stacking room in the opium factory at Patna, India. L Wellcome V0019154.jpg|thumb|Storage of opium at a [[British East India Company]] warehouse, {{circa|1850}}]]
Following China's defeat in the [[Second Opium War]] in 1858, China was forced to legalize opium and began massive domestic production. Importation of opium peaked in 1879 at 6,700 tons, and by 1906, China was producing 85 percent of the world's opium, some 35,000 tons, and 27 percent of its adult male population regularly used opium{{nsmdns}}13.5{{nbsp}}million people consuming 39,000 tons of opium yearly.<ref name="McCoy opium" /> From 1880 to the beginning of the Communist era, the British attempted to discourage the use of opium in China, but this effectively promoted the use of morphine, heroin, and cocaine, further exacerbating the problem of addiction.<ref name=Dikotter/>

[[File:Cover page of The Truth About Opium Smoking (1882).jpg|thumb|left|The cover page of the book of The Truth about Opium Smoking]]
Scientific evidence of the pernicious nature of opium use was largely undocumented in the 1890s, when Protestant [[missionaries]] in China decided to strengthen their opposition to the trade by compiling data which would demonstrate the harm the drug did. Faced with the problem that many Chinese associated Christianity with opium, partly due to the arrival of early Protestant missionaries on opium clippers, at the 1890 Shanghai Missionary Conference, they agreed to establish the Permanent Committee for the Promotion of Anti-Opium Societies in an attempt to overcome this problem and to arouse public opinion against the opium trade. The members of the committee were [[John Glasgow Kerr]], MD, American Presbyterian Mission in [[Guangzhou]] (Canton); [[Boudinot Currie Atterbury|B.C. Atterbury, MD]], American Presbyterian Mission in [[Beijing]] (Peking); Archdeacon [[Arthur Evans Moule|Arthur E. Moule]], Church Missionary Society in [[Shanghai]]; Henry Whitney, MD, American Board of Commissioners for foreign Missions in [[Fuzhou]]; the Rev. Samuel Clarke, China Inland Mission in [[Guiyang]]; the Rev. [[Arthur Gostick Shorrock]], English Baptist Mission in [[Taiyuan]]; and the Rev. [[Griffith John]], London Mission Society in [[Hankou]].<ref>Lodwick, Kathleen L. (1996). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=gT42B-69owoC Crusaders Against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China 1874–1917]''. University Press of Kentucky. {{ISBN|0-8131-1924-3}}</ref> These missionaries were generally outraged over the British government's [[Royal Commission on Opium]] visiting India but not China. Accordingly, the missionaries first organized the [[Anti-Opium League in China]] among their colleagues in every mission station in China. American missionary [[Hampden Coit DuBose]] acted as first president. This organization, which had elected national officers and held an annual national meeting, was instrumental in gathering data from every Western-trained medical doctor in China, which was then published as [[William Hector Park]] compiled ''Opinions of Over 100 Physicians on the Use of Opium in China'' (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1899). The vast majority of these medical doctors were missionaries; the survey also included doctors who were in private practices, particularly in Shanghai and [[Hong Kong]], as well as Chinese who had been trained in medical schools in Western countries. In England, the home director of the [[China Inland Mission]], [[Benjamin Broomhall]], was an active opponent of the opium trade, writing two books to promote the banning of opium smoking: ''The Truth about Opium Smoking'' and ''The Chinese Opium Smoker''. In 1888, Broomhall formed and became secretary of the Christian Union for the Severance of the British Empire with the Opium Traffic and editor of its periodical, ''National Righteousness''. He lobbied the [[British Parliament]] to stop the opium trade. He and [[James Laidlaw Maxwell]] appealed to the London Missionary Conference of 1888 and the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 to condemn the continuation of the trade. When Broomhall was dying, his son Marshall read to him from ''[[The Times]]'' the welcome news that an agreement had been signed ensuring the end of the opium trade within two years.

[[File:China & Opium 1908 en.jpg|thumb|right|Map showing the amount of opium produced in China in 1908: The quote "We English, by the policy we have pursued, are morally responsible for every acre of land in China which is withdrawn from the cultivation of grain and devoted to that of the poppy; so that the fact of the growth of the drug in China ought only to increase our sense of responsibility." is by [[Lord Justice Fry]]. ]]

Official Chinese resistance to opium was renewed on September 20, 1906, with an antiopium initiative intended to eliminate the drug problem within 10 years. The program relied on the turning of public sentiment against opium, with mass meetings at which [[drug paraphernalia|opium paraphernalia]] were publicly burned, as well as coercive legal action and the granting of police powers to organizations such as the Fujian Anti-Opium Society. Smokers were required to register for licenses for gradually reducing rations of the drug. Action against opium farmers centered upon a highly repressive incarnation of law enforcement in which rural populations had their property destroyed, their land confiscated and/or were publicly tortured, humiliated and executed.<ref>{{cite journal | author = Windle J | year = 2013 | title = 'Harms Caused by China's 1906–17 Opium Suppression Intervention' | url = http://roar.uel.ac.uk/4336/1/Harms%20caused%20by%201906%20intervention%20-%20pre-print%20copy.pdf| journal = International Journal of Drug Policy | volume = 24 | issue = 5| pages = 498–505 | doi=10.1016/j.drugpo.2013.03.001| pmid = 23567100 }}</ref> Addicts sometimes turned to missionaries for treatment for their addiction, though many associated these foreigners with the drug trade. The program was counted as a substantial success, with a cessation of direct British opium exports to China (but not Hong Kong)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.druglibrary.org/SCHAFFER/History/om/om7.htm|title=The opium monopoly|author=Ellen N. La Motte|access-date=September 25, 2007}}</ref> and most provinces declared free of opium production. Nonetheless, the success of the program was only temporary, with opium use rapidly increasing during the disorder following the death of [[Yuan Shikai]] in 1916.<ref name="Madancy">{{cite web|url=http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MADTRO.html|title=The Troublesome Legacy of Commissioner Lin|author=Joyce A. Madancy|date=April 2004|access-date=September 25, 2007|archive-date=January 30, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080130233401/http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MADTRO.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> Opium farming also increased, peaking in 1930 when the [[League of Nations]] singled China out as the primary source of illicit opium in East and Southeast Asia. Many<ref>Windle, J. (2011). 'Ominous Parallels and Optimistic Differences: Opium in China and Afghanistan'. Law, Crime and History, Vol. 2(1), pp. 141–164. http://roar.uel.ac.uk/1692/</ref> local powerholders facilitated the trade during this period to finance conflicts over territory and political campaigns. In some areas food crops were eradicated to make way for opium, contributing to famines in Guizhou and Shaanxi Provinces between 1921 and 1923, and food deficits in other provinces.

Beginning in 1915, Chinese nationalist groups came to describe the period of military losses and [[Unequal Treaties]] as the "[[Century of National Humiliation]]", later defined to end with the conclusion of the [[Chinese Civil War]] in 1949.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dur.ac.uk/chinese.politics/Public%20lectures/William%20A%20Callahan%20RenDa%20Lecture.pdf|title=Historical Legacies and Non/Traditional Security: Commemorating National Humiliation Day in China|author=William A Callahan|date=May 8, 2004|access-date=July 8, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711034022/http://www.dur.ac.uk/chinese.politics/Public%20lectures/William%20A%20Callahan%20RenDa%20Lecture.pdf|archive-date=July 11, 2007|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

In the northern provinces of [[Ningxia]] and [[Suiyuan]] in China, [[Hui people|Chinese Muslim]] General [[Ma Fuxiang]] both prohibited and engaged in the opium trade. It was hoped that Ma Fuxiang would have improved the situation, since Chinese Muslims were well known for opposition to smoking opium.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WSl5cl_wt24C&q=ma+fuxiang+opium&pg=PA312|title=Chronique du Toumet-Ortos: Looking through the Lens of Joseph Van Oost, Missionary in Inner Mongolia (1915–1921)|author=Ann Heylen|year=2004|publisher=Leuven University Press|location=Leuven, Belgium|page=312|isbn=978-90-5867-418-0|access-date=June 28, 2010}}</ref> Ma Fuxiang officially prohibited opium and made it illegal in Ningxia, but the [[Guominjun]] reversed his policy; by 1933, people from every level of society were abusing the drug, and Ningxia was left in destitution.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kDxtAAAAMAAJ&q=fuxiang+ban|title=Annals, Volumes 1–5|author=Association for Asian Studies. Southeast Conference|year=1979|publisher=The Conference|page=51|access-date=April 29, 2011}}</ref> In 1923, an officer of the [[Bank of China]] from [[Baotou]] found out that Ma Fuxiang was assisting the drug trade in opium which helped finance his military expenses. He earned {{US$|2{{nbsp}}million}} from taxing those sales in 1923. General Ma had been using the bank, a branch of the Government of China's exchequer, to arrange for silver currency to be transported to Baotou to use it to sponsor the trade.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JQeDYe8mv24C&q=ma+fuxiang+drug+sales&pg=PA31|title=Opium, State, and Society: China's Narco-Economy and the Guomindang, 1924–1937|author=Edward R. Slack|year=2001|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|location=Honolulu|page=240|isbn=978-0-8248-2361-0|access-date=June 28, 2010}}</ref>

The opium trade under the [[Chinese Communist Party]] was important to its finances in the 1940s.<ref name="Matten2011">{{cite book|
editor=Marc Andre Matten|
title=Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity|
url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ul89eeKHLGEC&pg=PA271|
date=December 9, 2011|
publisher=BRILL|
isbn=978-90-04-21901-4|
page=271}}</ref> [[Peter Vladimirov]]'s diary provided a first hand account.<ref name="Vladimirov1975">{{cite book|
author=Petr Parfenovich Vladimirov|
title=The Vladimirov diaries: Yenan, China, 1942–1945|
url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aPAdAAAAMAAJ|
year=1975|
publisher=Doubleday|
isbn=978-0-385-00928-7}}</ref> [[Chen Yung-fa]] provided a detailed historical account of how the opium trade was essential to the economy of Yan'an during this period.<ref name="SaichVen1995">{{cite book|
author=Chen Yung-Fa |
editor1=Tony Saich|
editor2=Hans J. Van de Ven|
title=New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution|
chapter=The Blooming Poppy under the Red Sun: The Yan'an Way and the Opium Trade |
chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FdDuL1eewWwC&pg=263|
year=1995|
publisher=M.E. Sharpe|
isbn=978-1-56324-428-5|
pages=263–298}}</ref> [[Mitsubishi]] and [[Mitsui]] were involved in the opium trade during the Japanese occupation of China.<ref>{{cite book |title= Retribution|last= Hastings|first= Max|author-link= Max Hastings|year= 2007|publisher= Vintage|location= New York|isbn= 978-0-307-27536-3|page= 413}}</ref>

[[Mao Zedong]] government is generally credited with eradicating both consumption and production of opium during the 1950s using unrestrained repression and social reform.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Liang|first1=Bin|last2=Lu|first2=Hong|date=2013|title=Discourses of drug problems and drug control in China: Reports in the People's Daily, 1946–2009|journal=[[China Information]]|volume=27|issue=3|page=302|doi=10.1177/0920203X13491387|s2cid=147627658}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Xiao|first1=Shuiyuan|last2=Yang|first2=Mei|last3=Zhou|first3=Liang|last4=Hao|first4=Wei|date=February 2015|title=Transition of China's drug policy: problems in practice|journal=[[Addiction (journal)|Addiction]]|volume=110|issue=2|pages=193–4|doi=10.1111/add.12689|pmid=25602038|doi-access=free}}</ref> Ten million addicts were forced into compulsory treatment, dealers were executed, and opium-producing regions were planted with new crops. Remaining opium production shifted south of the Chinese border into the [[Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)|Golden Triangle]] region.<ref name="McCoy opium" /> The remnant opium trade primarily served Southeast Asia, but spread to American soldiers during the [[Vietnam War]]; based on a study of opiate use in soldiers returning to the United States in 1971, 20 percent of participants were dependent enough to experience withdrawal symptoms.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hall |first1=Wayne |last2=Weier |first2=Megan |title=Lee Robins' studies of heroin use among US Vietnam veterans |journal=Addiction |date=2017 |volume=112 |issue=1 |page=177 |doi=10.1111/add.13584 |pmid=27650054 |s2cid=206974500 |url=https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584 |access-date=26 July 2022}}</ref>

=== Prohibition outside China ===
There were no legal restrictions on the importation or use of opium in the United States until the San Francisco Opium Den Ordinance, which banned dens for public smoking of opium in 1875, a measure fueled by [[anti-Chinese sentiment]] and the perception that whites were starting to frequent the dens. This was followed by an 1891 California law requiring that narcotics carry warning labels and that their sales be recorded in a registry; amendments to the California Pharmacy and Poison Act in 1907 made it a crime to sell opiates without a prescription, and bans on possession of opium or [[opium pipe]]s in 1909 were enacted.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking07/CA-WOD.html|title=State's War on Drugs – a 100-Year Bust|author=Dale Gieringer|date=March 4, 2007}}</ref>

At the US federal level, the legal actions taken reflected constitutional restrictions under the [[enumerated powers]] doctrine prior to reinterpretation of the [[commerce clause]], which did not allow the federal government to enact arbitrary prohibitions, but did permit arbitrary taxation.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/303a.htm|title=Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do|author=Peter McWilliams|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070525110756/http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/303a.htm|archive-date=May 25, 2007|df=mdy-all}}</ref> Beginning in 1883, opium importation was taxed at {{US$|6}} to {{US$|300}} per pound, until the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 prohibited the importation of opium altogether. In a similar manner, the [[Harrison Narcotics Tax Act]] of 1914, passed in fulfillment of the [[International Opium Convention]] of 1912, nominally placed a tax on the distribution of opiates, but served as a ''de facto'' prohibition of the drugs. Today, opium is regulated by the [[Drug Enforcement Administration]] under the [[Controlled Substances Act]].

Following passage of a Colonial Australian law in 1895, Queensland's [[Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897]] addressed opium addiction among [[Indigenous Australians|Aboriginal people]], though it soon became a general vehicle for depriving them of basic rights by administrative regulation. By 1905 all Australian states and territories had passed similar laws making prohibitions to Opium sale. Smoking and possession was prohibited in 1908.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/liac/hot_topic/hottopic/2000/4/2.html|author=Legal Information Access Centre|title=Drug laws in Australia}}</ref>

Hardening of Canadian attitudes toward Chinese opium users and fear of a spread of the drug into the white population led to the effective criminalization of opium for nonmedical use in Canada between 1908 and the mid-1920s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.projectcork.org/bibliographies/data/Bibliography_Historical.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030125153032/http://www.projectcork.org/bibliographies/data/Bibliography_Historical.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=2003-01-25|author=Carstairs C.|title=Jailed for Possession: Illegal Drug Use, Regulation, and Power in Canada, 1920–61|year=2006|access-date=May 21, 2007}}</ref>

In 1909, the [[International Opium Commission]] was founded, and by 1914, 34 nations had agreed that the production and importation of opium should be diminished. In 1924, 62 nations participated in a meeting of the commission. Subsequently, this role passed to the [[League of Nations]], and all signatory nations agreed to prohibit the import, sale, distribution, export, and use of all narcotic drugs, except for medical and scientific purposes. This role was later taken up by the [[International Narcotics Control Board]] of the United Nations under [[s:Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs Article 23: NATIONAL OPIUM AGENCIES|Article 23]] of the [[Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs]], and subsequently under the [[Convention on Psychotropic Substances]]. Opium-producing nations are required to designate a [[government agency]] to take physical possession of licit opium crops as soon as possible after harvest and conduct all wholesaling and exporting through that agency.<ref name="Schiff" />

===Indochina tax===
[[File:10 peintures annamites représentant les métiers au Tonkin (Fumeurs d'opium Annam - Tonkin).jpg|thumb|Two men smoking opium in [[Tonkin (French protectorate)|Tonkin]] in 1923]]
From 1897 to 1902, [[Paul Doumer]] (later [[President of France]]) was [[Governor-General of French Indochina]]. Upon his arrival the colonies were losing millions of francs each year. Determined to put them on a paying basis he levied taxes on various products, opium among them. The Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians who could or would not pay these taxes, lost their houses and land, and often became day laborers. Evidently, resorting to this means of gaining income gave France a vested interest in the continuation of opium use among the population of Indochina.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ladenburg |first=Thomas |date=1974 |title=Chapter 1, The French in Indochina |url=https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu//teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit12_1.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230301063400/https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu//teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit12_1.pdf |archive-date=1 March 2023 |access-date=21 March 2023 |website=[[University of Houston]]}}</ref>

=== Regulation in Britain and the United States ===
Before the 1920s, regulation in Britain was controlled by pharmacists. Pharmacists who were found to have prescribed opium for illegitimate uses and anyone found to have sold opium without proper qualifications would be prosecuted.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Anderson |first1=Stuart |last2=Berridge |first2=Virginia |year=2000 |title=Opium In 20th-Century Britain: Pharmacists, Regulation And The People |doi=10.1046/j.1360-0443.2000.951234.x |journal=Addiction |volume=95 |issue=1 |pages=23–36|pmid=10723823 }}</ref> With the passing of the Rolleston Act in Britain in 1926, doctors were allowed to prescribe opiates such as morphine and heroin if they believed their patients demonstrated a medical need. Because addiction was viewed as a medical problem rather than an indulgence, doctors were permitted to allow patients to wean themselves off opiates rather than cutting off any opiate use altogether.<ref name="BrownRichard">{{cite journal|author = Brown Richard Harvey |year=2002 |title=The Opium Trade And Opium Policies In India, China, Britain, And The United States: Historical Comparisons And Theoretical Interpretations |journal=Asian Journal of Social Science |volume=30 |issue=3 |page=623 | doi=10.1163/156853102320945420}}</ref> The passing of the Rolleston Act put the control of opium use in the hands of medical doctors instead of pharmacists. Later in the 20th century, addiction to opiates, especially heroin in young people, continued to rise and so the sale and prescription of opiates was limited to doctors in treatment centres. If these doctors were found to be prescribing opiates without just cause, then they could lose their licence to practice or prescribe drugs.<ref name="BrownRichard" />

Abuse of opium in the United States began in the late 19th century and was largely associated with Chinese immigrants. During this time the use of opium had little stigma; the drug was used freely until 1882 when a law was passed to confine opium smoking to specific dens.<ref name="BrownRichard" /> Until the full ban on opium-based products came into effect just after the beginning of the twentieth century, physicians in the US considered opium a miracle drug that could help with many ailments. Therefore, the ban on said products was more a result of negative connotations towards its use and distribution by Chinese immigrants who were heavily persecuted during this particular period in history.<ref name="BrownRichard" /> As the 19th century progressed however, doctor [[Hamilton Wright]] worked to decrease the use of opium in the US by submitting the Harrison Act to congress. This act put taxes and restrictions on the sale and prescription of opium, as well as trying to stigmatize the opium poppy and its derivatives as "demon drugs", to try to scare people away from them.<ref name="BrownRichard" /> This act and the stigma of a demon drug on opium, led to the criminalization of people that used opium-based products. It made the use and possession of opium and any of its derivatives illegal. The restrictions were recently redefined by the Federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/legislation/ucm148726.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090710011338/http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Legislation/ucm148726.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 10, 2009|title=Legislation – Controlled Substances Act|author=Office of the Commissioner |website=Fda.gov|access-date=2017-01-25}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/opium.html|title=Opium – Poppy Cultivation, Morphine and Heroin Manufacture|website=Erowid.org|access-date=2017-01-25}}</ref>

===20th-century use===
Opium production in China and the rest of East Asia was nearly wiped out after WWII, however, sustained covert support by the United States [[Central Intelligence Agency]] for the [[Thailand|Thai]] Northern Army and the Chinese Nationalist [[Kuomintang in Burma|Kuomintang army invading Burma]]  facilitated production and trafficking of the drug from Southeast Asia for decades, with the region becoming a major source of world supplies.<ref>Peter Dale Scott, Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus, 1 Nov. 2010, Volume 8 | Issue 44 | Number 2, [https://apjjf.org/-Peter-Dale-Scott/3436/article.html "Operation Paper: The United States and Drugs in Thailand and Burma" 米国とタイ・ビルマの麻薬]</ref>

During the Communist era in Eastern Europe, poppy stalks sold in bundles by farmers were processed by users with household chemicals to make ''kompot'' ("[[Polish heroin]]"), and poppy seeds were used to produce ''koknar'', an opiate.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,145798,00.html|title=Eastern Europe Shooting Up Under A Red Star|author=Jennifer Hull|date=June 24, 2001|access-date=April 17, 2020|magazine=Time|archive-date=February 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224132153/http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,145798,00.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Obsolescence ===
[[File:Apothecary vessel Opium 18-19 century.jpg|thumb|right|Apothecary vessel for storage of opium as a pharmaceutical, Germany, 18th or 19th century]]
Globally, opium has gradually been superseded by a variety of purified, semi-synthetic, and synthetic [[opioids]] with progressively stronger effects, and by other [[general anesthetics]]. This process began in 1804, when [[Friedrich Sertürner|Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner]] first isolated morphine from the opium poppy.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Morimoto | first=Satoshi |author2=Kazunari Suemori |author3=Jun Moriwaki |author4=Futoshi Taura |author5=Hiroyuki Tanaka |author6=Mariko Aso |author7=Masakazu Tanaka |author8=Hiroshi Suemune |author9=Yasuyuki Shimohigashi |author10=Yukihiro Shoyama | title= Morphine Metabolism in the Opium Poppy and Its Possible Physiological Function | journal=Journal of Biological Chemistry | volume=276 | issue=41 | pages=38179–38184| date=October 12, 2001 | pmid= 11498543| doi=10.1074/jbc.M107105200 |display-authors=etal|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pharmazeutische-zeitung.de/index.php?id=titel_16_2004 |title=Dem Morphin auf der Spur |publisher=Pharmazeutische-zeitung.de |access-date=October 7, 2011}}</ref>

[[File:Morphine10mgmLvial.jpg|thumb|Modern vial of morphine first isolated from opium by Friedrich Sertürner]]
The process continued until 1817, when Sertürner published his results after thirteen years of research and a nearly disastrous trial on himself and three boys.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Huxtable Ryan J. |author2=Schwartz Stephen K. W. | year = 2001 | title = The Isolation of Morphine—First Principles in Science and Ethics | url = http://triggered.edina.clockss.org/ServeContent?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmolinterv.aspetjournals.org%2Fcontent%2F1%2F4%2F189.full | journal = Molecular Interventions | volume = 1 | issue = 4| pages = 189–191 |pmid=14993340 }}</ref> The great advantage of purified morphine was that a patient could be treated with a known dose—whereas with raw plant material, as [[Gabriel Fallopius]] once lamented, "if soporifics are weak they do not help; if they are strong they are exceedingly dangerous."

Morphine was the first pharmaceutical isolated from a natural product, and this success encouraged the isolation of other alkaloids: by 1820, isolations of [[noscapine]], [[strychnine]], [[veratrine]], [[colchicine]], [[caffeine]], and [[quinine]] were reported. Morphine sales began in 1827, by [[Heinrich Emanuel Merck]] of Darmstadt, and helped him expand his family pharmacy into the [[Merck KGaA]] pharmaceutical company. [[Codeine]] was isolated in 1832 by [[Pierre Jean Robiquet]].<ref>{{cite book |last= Robiquet|first= Pierre Jean|date= 1832|title= Annales de chimie et de physique|url= https://archive.org/details/s3id13208200/page/264|language=french|volume=51|location= Paris|publisher= Crochard}}</ref>

The use of [[diethyl ether]] and [[chloroform]] for [[general anesthesia]] began in 1846–1847, and rapidly displaced the use of opiates and [[tropane]] alkaloids from [[Solanaceae]] due to their relative safety.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Carter AJ |title=Narcosis and nightshade |journal=The BMJ |volume=313 |issue=7072 |pages=1630–2 |year=1996 |pmid=8991015 |pmc=2359130 |doi=10.1136/bmj.313.7072.1630 }}</ref>

[[Heroin]], the first semi-synthetic opioid, was first synthesized in 1874, but was not pursued until its rediscovery in 1897 by [[Felix Hoffmann]] at the [[Bayer]] pharmaceutical company in [[Elberfeld]], [[Germany]]. From 1898 to 1910 heroin was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children. Because the lethal dose of heroin was viewed as a hundred times greater than its effective dose, heroin was advertised as a safer alternative to other opioids.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Heroin Addiction|last=Judson|first=Horace F|publisher=Vintage Books|year=1974|isbn=978-0-394-72017-3|page=54}}</ref> By 1902, sales made up 5 percent of the company's profits, and "heroinism" had attracted media attention.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://opioids.com/heroin/heroinhistory.html|title=How aspirin turned hero|author1=[[Richard Askwith]]|author2=The Sunday Times|date=September 13, 1998|access-date=May 2, 2007|archive-date=September 6, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150906072739/http://opioids.com/heroin/heroinhistory.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Oxycodone]], a [[thebaine]] derivative similar to [[codeine]], was introduced by Bayer in 1916 and promoted as a less-addictive analgesic. Preparations of the drug such as [[oxycodone/paracetamol|oxycodone with paracetamol]] and [[extended release]] oxycodone remain popular to this day.{{Citation needed|date=March 2021}}

A range of synthetic [[opioids]] such as [[methadone]] (1937), [[pethidine]] (1939), [[fentanyl]] (late 1950s), and derivatives thereof have been introduced, and each is preferred for certain specialized applications. Nonetheless, morphine remains the drug of choice for American [[combat medic]]s, who carry packs of [[syrette]]s containing 16 milligrams each for use on severely wounded soldiers.<ref name="MOLLE">{{cite web|url=http://www.brooksidepress.org/Products/OperationalMedicine/DATA/operationalmed/Manuals/FMSS/MOLLEMEDICALBAG.htm|title=Operational Medicine 2001 Field Medical Service School Student Handbook: Molle medical bag/surgical instrument set|date=December 7, 1999|access-date=June 27, 2007}}</ref> No drug has been found that can match the painkilling effect of [[opioid]]s without also duplicating much of their addictive potential.{{citation needed|date=January 2020}}

== Modern production and use ==
{{Update|section|date=October 2022}}
[[File:Opium (Drug).jpg|thumb|Dried latex from opium poppy]]
Opium was [[drug prohibition|prohibited]] in many countries during the early 20th century, leading to the modern pattern of opium production as a precursor for illegal [[recreational drug]]s or tightly regulated, highly taxed, legal prescription drugs. In 1980, 2,000 tons of opium supplied all legal and illegal uses.<ref name="Trocki">{{cite web|url=http://www.humanities.qut.edu.au/research/socialchange/docs/conf_papers2002/TrockiCarl.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080720075013/http://www.humanities.qut.edu.au/research/socialchange/docs/conf_papers2002/TrockiCarl.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 20, 2008|author=Carl A. Trocki|title=Opium as a commodity and the Chinese drug plague|year=2002|access-date=September 13, 2009|author-link=Carl A. Trocki}}</ref> Worldwide production in 2006 was 6610 tonnes<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/wdr07/WDR_2007_1.2_opium_heroin.pdf |title=0.0_Front Matters_05-31-07.qxd |access-date=March 21, 2010}}</ref>—about one-fifth the level of production in 1906; since then, opium production has fallen.{{Citation needed|date=March 2021}}

In 2002, the price for one kilogram of opium was {{US$|300}} for the farmer, {{US$|800}} for purchasers in [[Afghanistan]], and {{US$|16,000}} on the streets of Europe before conversion into heroin.<ref name="2002abc">{{cite web|url=http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2005/s1379788.htm|title=Afghanistan: America's blind eye|author=Mark Corcoran|website=[[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]] |access-date=May 11, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011161900/http://abc.net.au/foreign/content/2005/s1379788.htm|archive-date=October 11, 2007|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

Opium production increased considerably, surpassing 5,000 tons in 2002 and reaching 8,600 tons in Afghanistan and 840 tons in the [[Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)|Golden Triangle]] in 2014.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news.yahoo.com/afghan-poppy-farmers-seeds-boost-opium-output-060423845--finance.html|title=Afghan poppy farmers say new seeds will boost opium output|work=yahoo.com|access-date=April 4, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2014/December/opium-production-in-the-golden-triangle-continues-at-high-levels--threatening-regional-integration.html|title=Opium production in the Golden Triangle continues at high levels, threatening regional integration|work=unodc.org|access-date=April 4, 2016}}</ref> The [[World Health Organization]] has estimated that current production of opium would need to increase fivefold to account for total global medical need.<ref name="Rewriting history" /> Solar energy panels in use in Afghanistan have allowed farmers to dig their wells deeper, leading to a bumper crop of opium year after year.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.greenprophet.com/2022/06/solar-panels-opium-afghanistan/|title=Solar panels driving opium trade in Afghanistan|website= Greenprophet.com|first=Karin|last=Kloosterman|date=June 2, 2022|access-date=June 11, 2022}}</ref> In a 2023 report, poppy cultivation in southern Afghanistan was reduced by over 80% as a result of Taliban campaigns to stop its use toward opium. This included a 99% reduction of opium growth in the [[Helmand Province]].<ref>{{Cite news |date=7 June 2023 |title=Poppy Cultivation in South of Afghanistan Down by 80%: Report |pages=1 |work=ToloNews |url=https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-183684 |access-date=8 June 2023}}</ref> In November 2023, a U.N report showed that in the entirety of Afghanistan, poppy cultivation dropped by over 95%, removing it from its place as being the world's largest opium producer.<ref name="aljazeera.com">{{Cite web |title=Afghan opium poppy cultivation plunges by 95 percent under Taliban: UN |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/5/afghan-opium-poppy-cultivation-plunges-by-95-percent-under-taliban-un |access-date=2023-11-07 |website=Al Jazeera |language=en}}</ref><ref name="news.un.org">{{Cite web |date=2023-11-05 |title=Opium cultivation declines by 95 per cent in Afghanistan: UN survey {{!}} UN News |url=https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143232 |access-date=2023-11-07 |website=news.un.org |language=en}}</ref>

=== ''Papaver somniferum'' ===
{{Main|Papaver somniferum}}
Opium poppies are popular and attractive garden plants, whose flowers vary greatly in color, size and form. A modest amount of domestic cultivation in private gardens is not usually subject to legal controls.{{clarify|date=December 2023}} In part, this tolerance reflects variation in addictive potency. A cultivar for opium production, ''Papaver somniferum L. elite'', contains 91.2 percent morphine, codeine, and thebaine in its latex alkaloids, whereas in the latex of the condiment cultivar "Marianne", these three alkaloids total only 14.0 percent. The remaining alkaloids in the latter cultivar are primarily [[narcotoline]] and [[noscapine]].<ref>{{cite journal|vauthors=Frick S, Kramell R, Schmidt J, Fist AJ, Kutchan TM |title=Comparative qualitative and quantitative determination of alkaloids in narcotic and condiment Papaver somniferum cultivars|journal=Journal of Natural Products|date=May 2005|volume=68|issue=5|pages=666–73|pmid=15921406|doi=10.1021/np0496643|bibcode=2005JNAtP..68..666F }}</ref>

Seed capsules can be dried and used for decorations, but they also contain morphine, codeine, and other alkaloids. These pods can be boiled in water to produce a bitter [[Poppy tea|tea]] that induces a long-lasting intoxication. If allowed to mature, poppy pods ([[poppy straw]]) can be crushed and used to produce lower quantities of [[morphinans]]. In poppies subjected to mutagenesis and selection on a mass scale, researchers have been able to use poppy straw to obtain large quantities of [[oripavine]], a precursor to [[opioids]] and antagonists such as [[naltrexone]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.patentlens.com/patentlens/patsearch.cgi?patnum=US+6723894|archive-date=September 5, 2012|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120905182450/http://www.patentlens.com/patentlens/patsearch.cgi?patnum=US+6723894%23show|url-status=dead|title=Production of thebaine and oripavine|date=April 20, 2004|access-date=May 10, 2007}}</ref> Although millennia older, the production of poppy head decoctions can be seen as a quick-and-dirty variant of the Kábáy poppy straw process, which since its publication in 1930 has become the major method of obtaining licit opium alkaloids worldwide, as discussed in [[Morphine]].

[[Poppy seed]]s are a common and flavorsome topping for breads and cakes. One gram of poppy seeds contains up to 33 micrograms of morphine and 14 micrograms of codeine, and the [[Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration]] in the [[United States]] formerly mandated that all drug screening laboratories use a standard cutoff of 300 nanograms per milliliter in urine samples. A single poppy seed roll (0.76&nbsp;grams of seeds) usually did not produce a positive [[drug test]], but a positive result was observed from eating two rolls. A slice of poppy seed cake containing nearly five grams of seeds per slice produced positive results for 24 hours. Such results are viewed as [[false positive]] indications of drug use and were the basis of [[Poppy seed defence|a legal defense]].<ref>{{cite journal|vauthors=Meadway C, George S, Braithwaite R |date=August 31, 1998|title=Opiate concentrations following the ingestion of poppy seed products—evidence for 'the poppy seed defence'|journal=Forensic Science International|volume=96|issue=1|pages=29–38|pmid=9800363|doi=10.1016/S0379-0738(98)00107-8}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | doi = 10.1097/00007691-200608000-00011 | last1 = Trafkowski | first1 = J | last2 = Madea | first2 = B | last3 = Musshoff | first3 = F |date=Aug 2006 | title = The significance of putative urinary markers of illicit heroin use after consumption of poppy seed products | journal=Therapeutic Drug Monitoring | volume = 28 | issue = 4| pages = 552–8 | pmid = 16885724 | s2cid = 22585610 }}</ref> On November 30, 1998, the standard cutoff was increased to 2000 nanograms (two micrograms) per milliliter.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Experience with a Urine Opiate Screening and Confirmation Cutoff of 2000 mg/ml|author1=Albert D. Fraser |author2=David Worth |date=October 1999|journal=Journal of Analytical Toxicology|volume=23|pages=549–551|pmid=10517566|issue=6|doi=10.1093/jat/23.6.549|doi-access=free}}</ref> Confirmation by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry will distinguish amongst opium and variants including poppy seeds, heroin, and morphine and codeine pharmaceuticals by measuring the morphine:codeine ratio and looking for the presence of noscapine and acetylcodeine, the latter of which is only found in illicitly produced heroin, and heroin metabolites such as 6-monoacetylmorphine.<ref>Gahlinger 2001</ref>

=== Harvesting and processing ===
[[File:Harvesting opium.jpg|thumb|left|Harvesting opium]]
When grown for opium production, the skin of the ripening pods of these poppies is scored by a sharp blade at a time carefully chosen so that rain, wind, and dew cannot spoil the exudation of white, milky [[latex]], usually in the afternoon. Incisions are made while the pods are still raw, with no more than a slight yellow tint, and must be shallow to avoid penetrating hollow inner chambers or ''loculi'' while cutting into the lactiferous vessels. In the Indian Subcontinent, Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iran, the special tool used to make the incisions is called a ''nushtar'' or "nishtar" (from [[Persian language|Persian]], meaning a lancet) and carries three or four blades three millimeters apart, which are scored upward along the pod. Incisions are made three or four times at intervals of two to three days, and each time the "poppy tears", which dry to a sticky brown resin, are collected the following morning. One acre harvested in this way can produce three to five kilograms of raw opium.<ref name="opioids.com">{{cite book |author=Anil Aggrawal |author-link=Anil Aggrawal |year=1995 |title=Narcotic Drugs |chapter=CHAPTER 2: THE STORY OF OPIUM |chapter-url=http://opioids.com/narcotic-drugs/chapter-2.html |publisher=National Book Trust |location=New Delhi |isbn=978-81-237-1383-0 |access-date=May 6, 2007 |archive-date=May 19, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070519140512/http://opioids.com/narcotic-drugs/chapter-2.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> In the [[Soviet Union]], pods were typically scored horizontally, and opium was collected three times, or else one or two collections were followed by isolation of opiates from the ripe capsules. Oil poppies, an alternative strain of ''P. somniferum'', were also used for production of opiates from their capsules and stems.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1969-01-01_4_page002.html|title=UNODC – Bulletin on Narcotics – 1969 Issue 4 – 001|website=Unodc.org|access-date=June 11, 2022}}</ref> A traditional Chinese method of harvesting opium latex involved cutting off the heads and piercing them with a coarse needle then collecting the dried opium 24 to 48 hours later.

Raw opium may be sold to a merchant or broker on the black market, but it usually does not travel far from the field before it is refined into '''morphine base''', because the pungent, jelly-like form of raw opium is bulkier and harder to smuggle. Crude laboratories in the field are capable of refining opium into morphine base by a simple [[acid-base extraction]]. A sticky, brown paste, morphine base is pressed into bricks and sun-dried, and can either be smoked, prepared into other forms or processed into heroin.<ref name="Frontline" />

Other methods of preparation (besides smoking), include processing into regular opium [[tincture]] (''tinctura opii''), [[laudanum]], [[paregoric]] (''tinctura opii camphorata''), [[herbal wine]] (e.g., ''vinum opii''), opium powder (''pulvis opii''), opium [[sirup]] (''sirupus opii'') and opium extract (''extractum opii'').<ref name=Belgische>Belgische Farmacopee, 5de uitgave, 1966; part 3</ref> Vinum opii is made by combining sugar, [[white wine]], [[cinnamon]], and [[cloves]]. Opium syrup is made by combining 97.5 part sugar syrup with 2.5 parts opium extract. Opium extract (''extractum opii'') finally can be made by macerating raw opium with water. To make opium extract, 20 parts water are combined with 1 part raw opium which has been boiled for 5 minutes (the latter to ease mixing).<ref name=Belgische />

Heroin is widely preferred because of increased potency. One study in postaddicts found heroin to be approximately 2.2 times more potent than [[morphine]] by weight with a similar duration; at these relative quantities, they could distinguish the drugs subjectively but had no preference.<ref>{{cite journal|author1=W. R. Martin |author2=H. F. Fraser |date=September 1, 1961|title=A comparative study of subjective and physiological effects of heroin and morphine administered intravenously in postaddicts|journal=Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics|volume=133|issue=3|pages=388–399|doi=10.1016/S0022-3565(25)26119-5 |url=http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/133/3/388|access-date=June 6, 2007|pmid=13767429}}</ref> Heroin was also found to be twice as potent as morphine in surgical anesthesia.<ref>{{cite journal|vauthors=Robinson SL, Rowbotham DJ, Smith G |date=July 1991|title=Morphine compared with diamorphine. A comparison of dose requirements and side-effects after hip surgery|journal=Anaesthesia|volume=46|issue=7|pages=538–40|pmid=1862890|doi=10.1111/j.1365-2044.1991.tb09650.x|s2cid=35289009|doi-access=free}}</ref> Morphine is converted into heroin by a simple chemical reaction with [[acetic anhydride]], followed by purification.<ref>{{cite web |title=Interpol |url=http://www.interpol.int/Public/Drugs/heroin/default.asp |archive-url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20010924215045/http://www.interpol.int/public/drugs/heroin/default.asp |url-status=dead |archive-date=2001-09-24 |access-date=May 9, 2006 }}</ref><ref name="UNODC 2005">{{cite web|url=http://www.unodc.org/pdf/WDR_2005/volume_1_chap1_opium.pdf|title=UNODC World Drug Report 2005|access-date=May 2, 2007}}</ref> Especially in Mexican production, opium may be converted directly to "[[black tar heroin]]" in a simplified procedure. This form predominates in the U.S. west of the Mississippi. Relative to other preparations of heroin, it has been associated with a dramatically decreased rate of HIV transmission among [[intravenous drug use]]rs (4 percent in Los Angeles vs. 40 percent in New York) due to technical requirements of injection, although it is also associated with greater risk of venous [[Sclerosis (medicine)|sclerosis]] and [[necrotizing fasciitis]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2004/01/5049/black-tar-heroin-use-explains-lower-hiv-levels-among-injection-drug-users-i/|author1=Jeff Sheehy |author2=Corinna Kaarlela |title=Black tar heroin use explains lower HIV levels among intravenous drug users in the Western U.S|date=January 26, 2004|access-date=May 24, 2017}}</ref>

=== Illegal production ===
{{See also|Opium production in Afghanistan|Illegal drug trade}}
[[File:Drugroutemap.gif|thumb|right|International drug routes]]
[[File:Opium poppies in Helmand -a.jpg|thumb|right|Afghanistan, [[Helmand province]]. A [[United States Marines|Marine]] greets local children working in the field of opium poppies near the base.]]

[[opium production in Afghanistan|Afghanistan]] was formerly the primary producer of the drug. Having regularly producing 70 percent of the world's opium, Afghanistan decreased production to 74 tons per year under a ban by the [[Taliban]] in 2000, a move which cut production by 94 percent. A year later, after American and British troops [[War in Afghanistan (2001–present)|invaded Afghanistan]], removed the Taliban and installed the interim government, the land under cultivation leapt back to {{convert|285|sqmi|km2}}, with Afghanistan supplanting Burma to become the world's largest opium producer once more. Opium production increased rapidly in Afghanistan from that point,<ref>{{cite news|author=Paul Harris in Peshawar |url=http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,605618,00.html |title=Victorious warlords set to open the opium floodgates |publisher=Observer.guardian.co.uk |date= November 25, 2001|access-date=March 21, 2010 | location=London}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/wdr07/WDR_2007_3.1.1_afghanistan.pdf |title=UN World Drug Report 2007 – Afghanistan |access-date=March 21, 2010}}</ref> reaching an all-time high in 2006. According to [[Drug Enforcement Administration|DEA]] statistics, Afghanistan's production of oven-dried opium increased to 1,278 tons in 2002, more than doubled by 2003, and nearly doubled again during 2004. In late 2004, the U.S. government estimated that 206,000 hectares were under poppy cultivation, 4.5 percent of the country's total cropland, and produced 4,200 metric tons of opium, 76 percent of the world's supply, yielding 60 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/afghanistan/weeklyreports/022405_report.html|title=Rebuilding Afghanistan: Weekly Activity Update|date=February 24, 2005|access-date=May 11, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070509070349/http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/afghanistan/weeklyreports/022405_report.html|archive-date=May 9, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref> In 2006, the [[UN Office on Drugs and Crime]] estimated production to have risen 59 percent to {{convert|407000|acre|ha|order=flip}} in cultivation, yielding 6,100 tons of opium, 82 percent of the world's supply.<ref>{{cite news|author=BBC News|date=August 2, 2006|title=UN warns of soaring Afghan opium |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5308180.stm|access-date=June 6, 2007}}</ref> The value of the resulting heroin was estimated at {{US$|3.5{{nbsp}}billion}}, of which Afghan farmers were estimated to have received {{US$|700{{nbsp}}million}} in revenue. For farmers, the crop can be up to ten times more profitable than wheat. The price of opium is around {{US$|138}} per kilo. Opium production has led to rising tensions in Afghan villages. Though direct conflict has yet to occur, the opinions of the new class of young rich men involved in the opium trade are at odds with those of the traditional village leaders.<ref name="Goodhand-2000">{{cite journal | last1 = Goodhand|first1= Jonathan | year = 2000 | title = From holy war to opium war? A case study of the opium economy in North Eastern Afghanistan | journal = Central Asian Survey | volume = 19 | issue = 2| pages = 265–280 | doi=10.1080/02634930050079354|pmid= 18348361 |s2cid= 2591603 }}</ref>
[[File:Afghanistan opium poppy cultivation 1994-2007b.PNG|thumb|left|Afghanistan opium poppy cultivation, 1994–2016 (hectares)]]
An increasingly large fraction of opium is processed into morphine base and heroin in drug labs in Afghanistan. Despite an international set of chemical controls designed to restrict availability of [[acetic anhydride]], it enters the country, perhaps through its Central Asian neighbors which do not participate. A counternarcotics law passed in December 2005 requires Afghanistan to develop registries or regulations for tracking, storing, and owning acetic anhydride.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2006/vol1/html/62105.htm |title=International Narcotics Control Strategy Report: Chemical controls |access-date=May 11, 2007 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> In November 2023, a U.N report showed that in the entirety of Afghanistan, poppy cultivation dropped by over 95%, removing it from its place as being the world's largest opium producer.<ref name="aljazeera.com"/><ref name="news.un.org"/>

Besides Afghanistan, smaller quantities of opium are produced in Pakistan, the [[Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)|Golden Triangle]] region of Southeast Asia (particularly [[Burma]]), Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico.

[[File:opiumball.jpg|thumb|{{convert|200|g|abbr=on}} Spanish opium ball]]
Chinese production mainly trades with and profits from North America. In 2002, they were seeking to expand through eastern United States. In the post 9/11 era, trading between borders became difficult and because new international laws were set into place, the opium trade became more diffused. Power shifted from remote to high-end smugglers and opium traders. Outsourcing became a huge factor for survival for many smugglers and opium farmers.<ref>Brzezinski, Matthew. "Re-Engineering the Drug Business". ''The New York Times Magazine'', June 23, 2002</ref>

In 2023 [[Myanmar|Burma]] overtook [[Afghanistan]] and became the world's largest producer of opium, producing 1080 metric tones according the [[United Nations|UN]] Southeast Asia Opium Survey report.<ref>{{Cite web |title=UNODC |url=https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/2023/Southeast_Asia_Opium_Survey_2023.pdf |access-date=20 December 2023}}</ref>

=== Legal production ===
{{Main|Opium licensing}}
Legal opium production is allowed under the [[United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs]] and other international drug treaties, subject to strict supervision by the [[law enforcement agency|law enforcement agencies]] of individual countries. The leading legal production method is the Robertson-[[Gregory process]], whereby the entire poppy, excluding roots and leaves, is mashed and stewed in dilute acid solutions. The [[alkaloids]] are then recovered via [[acid-base extraction]] and purified. The exact date of its discovery is unknown, but it was described by Wurtz in his ''Dictionnaire de chimie pure et appliquée'' published in 1868.<ref>{{cite web|title=UNODC – Bulletin on Narcotics – 1950 Issue 3 – 003|url=https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1950-01-01_3_page004.html|access-date=2021-05-05|website=United Nations : Office on Drugs and Crime|language=en}}</ref>

[[Legal opium production in India]] is much more traditional. As of 2008, opium was collected by farmers who were licensed to grow {{convert|0.1|ha|acre}} of opium poppies, who to maintain their licences needed to sell 56 kilograms of unadulterated raw opium paste. The price of opium paste is fixed by the government according to the quality and quantity tendered. The average is around 1500 rupees ({{US$|29}}) per kilogram.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cbn.nic.in|title=CENTRAL BUREAU OF NARCOTICS, INDIA|work=cbn.nic.in|access-date=April 4, 2016}}</ref> Some additional money is made by drying the poppy heads and collecting poppy seeds, and a small fraction of opium beyond the quota may be consumed locally or diverted to the black market. The opium paste is dried and processed into government opium and alkaloid factories before it is packed into cases of 60 kilograms for export. Purification of chemical constituents is done in India for domestic production, but typically done abroad by foreign importers.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ieo.org/opm_mass.html|title=Opium for the masses: photo essay on cultivation of opium in India|author=Pablo Bartholomew|author-link=Pablo Bartholomew|year=1996|access-date=June 15, 2007|archive-date=July 1, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070701222546/http://www.ieo.org/opm_mass.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Legal opium importation from India and Turkey is conducted by [[Mallinckrodt]], [[Noramco]], [[Abbott Laboratories]], [[Purdue Pharma]], and [[Cody Laboratories Inc.]] in the United States, and legal opium production is conducted by [[GlaxoSmithKline]], [[Johnson & Johnson]], [[Johnson Matthey]], and [[Mayne Pharma|Mayne]] in [[Tasmania]], Australia; [[Sanofi Aventis]] in France; [[Shionogi]] Pharmaceutical in Japan; and [[MacFarlan Smith]] in the United Kingdom.<ref name="Senlis">{{cite web|url=http://www.senliscouncil.net/documents/feasibility_study_conclusions_and_recommendations |title=Feasibility Study on Opium Licensing in Afghanistan |author=Senlis Council |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928073417/http://www.senliscouncil.net/documents/feasibility_study_conclusions_and_recommendations |archive-date=September 28, 2007 }}</ref> The UN treaty requires that every country submit annual reports to the [[International Narcotics Control Board]], stating that year's actual consumption of many classes of controlled drugs as well as opioids and projecting required quantities for the next year.{{citation needed|date=September 2013}} This is to allow trends in consumption to be monitored and production quotas allotted.{{citation needed|date=September 2013}}

In 2005, the European [[Senlis Council]] began developing a programme which hopes to solve the problems caused by the large quantity of [[Opium production in Afghanistan|opium produced illegally in Afghanistan]], most of which is converted to heroin and smuggled for sale in Europe and the United States.{{citation needed|date=September 2013}} This proposal is to [[opium licensing|license]] Afghan farmers to produce opium for the world pharmaceutical market, and thereby solve another problem, that of chronic underuse of potent analgesics where required within [[developing country|developing nations]]. Part of the proposal is to overcome the "80–20 rule" that requires the U.S. to purchase 80 percent of its legal opium from India and Turkey to include Afghanistan, by establishing a second-tier system of supply control that complements the current INCB regulated supply and demand system by providing poppy-based medicines to countries who cannot meet their demand under the current regulations. Senlis arranged a conference in Kabul that brought drug policy experts from around the world to meet with Afghan government officials to discuss internal security, corruption issues, and legal issues within Afghanistan.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/events/kabul|title=The Kabul International Symposium on Drug Policy|author=Senlis Council|date=September 26, 2005|access-date=May 4, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070313235653/http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/events/kabul/|archive-date=March 13, 2007|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}</ref>
In June 2007, the council launched a "Poppy for Medicines" project that provides a technical blueprint for the implementation of an integrated control system within Afghan village-based poppy for medicine projects: the idea promotes the economic diversification by redirecting proceeds from the legal cultivation of poppy and production of poppy-based medicines.<ref name="senliscouncil">[http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/publications/documents/poppy_medicine_technical_dossier Poppy for Medicine: "Licensing poppy for the production of essential medicines: an integrated counter-narcotics, development, and counter-insurgency model for Afghanistan"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928073343/http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/publications/documents/poppy_medicine_technical_dossier |date=September 28, 2007 }}. ''[[Senlis Council]].'' June 2007. Retrieved on September 21, 2007.</ref> There has been criticism of the Senlis report findings by Macfarlan Smith, who argue that though they produce morphine in Europe, they were never asked to contribute to the report.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/pdf/3036656/afg-CN-Macfarlanesmithreport |title=Letter from Macfarlan Smith |access-date=March 21, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090322025248/http://www.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/pdf/3036656/afg-CN-Macfarlanesmithreport |archive-date=March 22, 2009 |df=mdy-all }}</ref>

=== Cultivation in the UK ===
In late 2006, the British government permitted the pharmaceutical company [[MacFarlan Smith]] (a [[Johnson Matthey]] company) to cultivate opium poppies in England for medicinal reasons, after Macfarlan Smith's primary source, India, decided to increase the price of export opium latex. This move is well received by British farmers, with a major opium poppy field located in [[Didcot]], England. The British government has contradicted the Home Office's suggestion that opium cultivation can be legalized in Afghanistan for exports to the United Kingdom, helping lower poverty and internal fighting while helping the [[National Health Service|NHS]] to meet the high demand for [[morphine]] and heroin. Opium poppy cultivation in the United Kingdom does not need a licence, but a licence is required for those wishing to extract opium for medicinal products.<ref>The painkilling fields: England's opium poppies that tackle the NHS morphine crisis, [http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23404311-details/The%20painkilling%20fields:%20England's%20opium%20poppies%20that%20tackle%20the%20NHS%20morphine%20crisis/article.do Press release] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081010224932/https://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23404311-details/The%20painkilling%20fields%3A%20England%27s%20opium%20poppies%20that%20tackle%20the%20NHS%20morphine%20crisis/article.do |date=October 10, 2008 }}, September 15, 2007.</ref>

=== Consumption ===
[[File:Akha man with opium pipe.jpg|thumb|right|An [[Akha people|Akha]] man smokes a pipe containing opium mixed with tobacco.]]
In the industrialized world, the United States is the world's biggest consumer of prescription opioids, with Italy being one of the lowest, because of tighter regulations on prescribing narcotics for pain relief.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Oral morphine consumption in Italy and Sicily|author=S. Mercadante|journal=Journal of Pain and Symptom Management|year=1998|volume=15|issue=4|pages=227–30|doi=10.1016/S0885-3924(98)00368-6|pmid=9601157|df=mdy-all|doi-access=free}}</ref> Most opium imported into the United States is broken down into its [[alkaloid]] constituents, and whether legal or illegal, most current drug use occurs with processed derivatives such as heroin rather than with unrefined opium.

[[Intravenous injection]] of opiates is most used: by comparison with injection, "dragon chasing" (heating of heroin on a piece of foil), and [[madak]] and "ack ack" (smoking of cigarettes containing tobacco mixed with heroin powder) are only 40 percent and 20 percent efficient, respectively.<ref>{{cite journal|title=An Assessment Of Inhalation As A Mode Of Administration Of Heroin By Addicts|url=http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/154/1/142|author1=Benjamin Pui-Nin Mo |author2=E. Leong Way |journal=Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics|volume=154|issue=1|date=October 1, 1966|pages=142–151|doi=10.1016/S0022-3565(25)27451-1 |access-date=June 6, 2007|pmid=5924312}}</ref> One study of British heroin addicts found a 12-fold excess mortality ratio (1.8 percent of the group dying per year).<ref>{{cite journal|title=Acute Heroin Overdose|author=Karl A. Sporer, M.D.|date=April 6, 1999|volume=130|issue=7|pages=584–590|doi=10.7326/0003-4819-130-7-199904060-00019|pmid=10189329|journal=Annals of Internal Medicine|s2cid=22949289}}</ref> Most heroin deaths result not from overdose ''per se'', but combination with other depressant drugs such as [[alcohol (drug)|alcohol]] or [[benzodiazepine]]s.<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Darke S, Zador D |title=Fatal heroin 'overdose': a review |journal=[[Addiction (journal)|Addiction]] |volume=91 |issue=12 |pages=1765–72 |date=December 1996 |pmid=8997759 |doi=10.1046/j.1360-0443.1996.911217652.x }}</ref>

The smoking of opium does not involve the [[pyrolysis|burning]] of the material as might be imagined. Rather, the prepared opium is indirectly heated to temperatures at which the active alkaloids, chiefly morphine, are vaporized. In the past, smokers would use a specially designed [[opium pipe]] which had a removable knob-like pipe-bowl of fired earthenware attached by a metal fitting to a long, cylindrical stem.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://softfamous.com/category/windows/network/vpn/|title=Anonymous Proxy|website=Softfamous.com|access-date=June 11, 2022}}</ref> A small "pill" of opium about the size of a pea would be placed on the pipe-bowl, which was then heated by holding it over an [[opium lamp]], a special oil lamp with a distinct funnel-like chimney to channel heat into a small area. The smoker would lie on his or her side in order to guide the pipe-bowl and the tiny pill of opium over the stream of heat rising from the chimney of the oil lamp and inhale the vaporized opium fumes as needed. Several pills of opium were smoked at a single session depending on the smoker's tolerance to the drug. The effects could last up to twelve hours.

In [[Eastern world|Eastern culture]], opium is more commonly used in the form of [[paregoric]] to treat [[diarrhea]]. This is a weaker solution than [[laudanum]], an alcoholic tincture which was prevalently used as a pain medication and sleeping aid. Tincture of opium has been prescribed for, among other things, severe diarrhea.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://drugs.uta.edu/laudanum.html|title=Laudanum|access-date=May 4, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070531225628/http://drugs.uta.edu/laudanum.html|archive-date=May 31, 2007|df=mdy-all}}</ref> Taken thirty minutes prior to meals, it significantly slows intestinal motility, giving the intestines greater time to absorb fluid in the stool.

Despite the historically negative view of opium as a cause of addiction, the use of morphine and other derivatives isolated from opium in the treatment of chronic pain has been reestablished. If given in controlled doses, modern opiates can be an effective treatment for [[neuropathic pain]] and other forms of chronic pain.<ref name="BallantyneJane">{{cite journal |last1=Ballantyne |first1=JC |last2=Mao |first2=J |title=Opioid therapy for chronic pain. |journal=The New England Journal of Medicine |date=13 November 2003 |volume=349 |issue=20 |pages=1943–53 |doi=10.1056/NEJMra025411 |pmid=14614170}}</ref>

== Chemical and physiological properties ==
{{See also|Opioid|Opiate|Morphinan}}
<div class="skin-invert-image">{{multiple image
 | align             = right
 | direction         = horizontal
 | width             = 120
 | image1            = Morphin - Morphine.svg
 | alt1              =
 | caption1          = [[Morphine]] is the primary biologically active chemical constituent of opium
 | image2            = Codein - Codeine.svg
 | alt2              =
 | caption2          = [[Codeine]] is another biologically active chemical constituent of opium
}}</div>

Opium contains two main groups of [[alkaloid]]s. [[Phenanthrene]]s such as [[morphine]], [[codeine]], and [[thebaine]] are the main psychoactive constituents.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.homehealth-uk.com/medical/professional_drugtests_opiates.htm |title=Opiates |publisher=Homehealth-uk.com |access-date=October 7, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111031001645/http://www.homehealth-uk.com/medical/professional_drugtests_opiates.htm |archive-date=October 31, 2011 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> [[Isoquinolines]] such as [[papaverine]] and [[noscapine]] have no significant [[central nervous system]] effects. Morphine is the most prevalent and important alkaloid in opium, consisting of 10–16 percent of the total, and is responsible for most of its harmful effects such as [[lung edema]], respiratory difficulties, coma, or cardiac or respiratory collapse. Morphine binds to and activates [[mu opioid receptor]]s in the brain, spinal cord, stomach and intestine. Regular use can lead to [[drug tolerance]] or [[physical dependence]]. Chronic opium addicts in 1906 China<ref name="McCoy opium" /> consumed an average of eight grams of opium daily; opium addicts in modern Iran<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.caucaz.com/home_eng/breve_contenu.php?id=163|title=3 grams of opium for 1 dollar|author1=Max Chamka |author2=Translated by Geraldine Ring |publisher=Caucaz europenews|access-date=May 6, 2007}}</ref> are thought to consume about the same.

Both [[analgesia]] and [[drug addiction]] are functions of the mu opioid receptor, the class of [[opioid receptor]] first identified as responsive to morphine. Tolerance is associated with the superactivation of the receptor, which may be affected by the degree of [[endocytosis]] caused by the [[opioid]] administered, and leads to a superactivation of [[cyclic AMP]] signaling.<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Finn AK, Whistler JL |title=Endocytosis of the mu opioid receptor reduces tolerance and a cellular hallmark of opiate withdrawal |journal=Neuron |volume=32 |issue=5 |pages=829–39 |date=December 2001 |pmid=11738029 |doi= 10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00517-7|s2cid=16396686 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Long-term use of morphine in [[palliative care]] and the management of [[chronic pain]] always entails a risk that the patient develops tolerance or physical dependence. There are many kinds of [[Drug rehabilitation|rehabilitation treatment]], including pharmacologically based treatments with [[naltrexone]], [[methadone]], or [[ibogaine]].<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Alper KR, Lotsof HS, Kaplan CD |title=The ibogaine medical subculture |journal=Journal of Ethnopharmacology |volume=115 |issue=1 |pages=9–24 |date=January 2008 |pmid=18029124 |doi=10.1016/j.jep.2007.08.034 | s2cid =  2355108}}</ref>

In 2021, the [[International Agency for Research on Cancer]] concluded that opium is a Group 1 (sufficient evidence) human carcinogen, causing cancers of the larynx, lung, and urinary bladder.<ref>[https://monographs.iarc.who.int/news-events/volume-126-opium-consumption-2/ Volume 126: Opium Consumption] ''Volume 126: Opium Consumption''.</ref>

== Slang terms ==
<!-- Please do not add more terms here, unless you first discuss the addition on the talk page. -->
Some slang terms for opium include: "Big O", "Shanghai Sally", "dope", "hop", "midnight oil", "O.P.", and "tar". "Dope" and "tar" can also refer to heroin. The traditional opium pipe is known as a "dream stick."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thatspoppycock.com/library/media/opiate-slang-dictionary/|title=Opiate Slang Dictionary|website=That's Poppycock|access-date=May 1, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100409154135/http://www.thatspoppycock.com/library/media/opiate-slang-dictionary/|archive-date=April 9, 2010|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}</ref> The term ''dope'' entered the English language in the early nineteenth century, originally referring to viscous liquids, particularly sauces or gravy.<ref name="Wordorigins">Dave Wilton, [http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/dope/ "dope"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161002102526/http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/dope/ |date=October 2, 2016 }}, ''Wordorigins.org'' (5 January 2009).</ref>&nbsp; It has been used to refer to opiates since at least 1888, and this usage arose because opium, when prepared for smoking, is viscous.<ref name="Wordorigins" />

== See also ==
* [[Golden Crescent]]
* [[Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)|Golden Triangle]]
* [[History of Jardine, Matheson & Co.]]
* [[Illegal drug trade in Colombia]]
* [[Mexican Drug War]]
* [[Nabidh]]
* [[Opium dollar]]
* [[Opium replacement]]
* [[Protocol for Limiting and Regulating the Cultivation of the Poppy Plant, the Production of, International and Wholesale Trade in, and Use of Opium]]
* [[Psychoactive drug]]
* [[Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade]]
* [[Morphine]]
* [[Heroin]]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
* Ahmad, Diana L. ''The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-century American West'' (University of Nevada Press, 2007). Drugs and Racism in the Old West.
* Armero and Rapaport. ''The Arts of an Addiction. Qing Dynasty Opium Pipes and Accessories'' (privately printed, 2005)
* Auerbach, Sascha. ''Race, Law and 'The Chinese Puzzle' in Imperial Britain.'' New York: Palgrave-Macmillan Press, 2009.
* Booth, Martin. ''Opium: A History''. London: Simon & Schuster, Ltd., 1996.
* {{cite web|url=http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/chandra.opium|title=Economic Histories of the Opium Trade|author=Chandra, Siddharth|year=2008|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130928064349/http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/chandra.opium|archive-date=September 28, 2013|df=mdy-all|access-date=November 9, 2008}}
* {{cite web|url=http://www.geopium.org/opium_uncovering_politics_poppy_chouvy_ibtauris_harvard.htm|title=Opium. Uncovering the Politics of the Poppy, London, I.B. Tauris (Cambridge, Harvard University Press: 2010)|author=Chouvy, P.A.|year=2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111026180046/http://www.geopium.org/opium_uncovering_politics_poppy_chouvy_ibtauris_harvard.htm|archive-date=October 26, 2011|df=mdy-all|access-date=October 20, 2009}}
* {{cite book|url=https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/7293|title=The Opium Habit|author=Day, Horace B.|year=1868}}
* {{cite book|url=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-de-quincey/confessions-of-an-english-opium-eater|title=Confessions of an English opium-eater|author=de Quincey, Thomas|year=1821|publisher=Standard Ebooks }}
* Derks, Hans: ''History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East, ca. 1600–1950.'' Sinica Leidensia, 105. Leiden: Brill, 2012. {{ISSN|0169-9563}}. {{ISBN|978-90-04-22158-1}}
* Dikötter, Frank, Lars Laamann, and Zhou Xun. [https://books.google.com/books?id=mS9vZgpIiRYC Narcotic culture: a history of drugs in China] Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
* Dormandy, Thomas (2012) ''Opium: Reality's Dark Dream'', Yale University Press
* Fairbank, J.K. (1978) ''The Cambridge History of China: volume 10 part I'', Cambridge, CUP
* Franck Daninos, ''L'opium légal produit en France'', [[La Recherche]], May 2005
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/agreementbetween00grearich|title=Agreement between Great Britain and Portugal for regulation of the opium monopolies of the colonies of Hong Kong and Macao|author=Great Britain|year=1913|publisher=London, Printed for H.M. Stationery office. by Harrison and sons, ltd.}}
* Forbes, Andrew; Henley, David (2011). ''Traders of the Golden Triangle''. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. {{ASIN|B006GMID5K}}
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/truthaboutindian00grearich|title=The truth about Indian opium|year=1922|author=Great Britain, India office|publisher=[London] Printed by H.M. Stationery Off.}}
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/opiumhistoricaln00chinrich|author=Hai guan zong shui wu si shu|year=1889|title=The poppy in China|publisher=Shanghai; Statistical Dept. of the Inspectorate General of Customs}}
* Hideyuki Takano; ''The Shore Beyond Good and Evil: A Report from Inside Burma's Opium Kingdom'' (2002, Kotan, {{ISBN|0-9701716-1-7}})
* [[Lucy Inglis|Inglis, Lucy]], ''Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium'', Pan Macmillan, London, 2018. **Review: Julie Peakman: "Not Just Smelling the Flowers", ''History Today'' History Today Vol. 68/10, October 2018, pp.&nbsp;102–103.
* Latimer, Dean, and Jeff Goldberg with an Introduction by William Burroughs. ''Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium''. New York: Franklin Watts, 1981
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/twoyearsinchinan00macprich|title=Two years in China. Narrative of the Chinese expedition, from its formation in April, 1840, to the treaty of peace in August, 1842|author=MacPherson, Duncan|year=1843|publisher=London, Saunders}}
* Martin, Steven. ''The Art of Opium Antiques''. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2007. Photographs and history of Chinese and Vietnamese opium-smoking paraphernalia.
* [[Alfred W. McCoy|McCoy, Alfred W.]] ''The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade''. New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991.
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/druggingnationst00merwiala|title=Drugging a nation, the story of China and the opium curse; a personal investigation, during an extended tour, of the present conditions of the opium trade in China and its effects upon the nation|author=Merwin, Samuel|year=1907|publisher=New York, Chicago [etc.] : F. H. Revell company}}
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/inventionscustom00morerich|title=A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customs of ancient and modern nations in the manufacture and use of inebriating liquors; with the present practice of distillation in all its varieties: together with an extensive illustration of the consumption and effects of opium, and other stimulants used in the East, as substitutes for wine and spirits|author=Morewood, Samuel|year=1838|publisher=Dublin, W. Curry and W. Carson}}
* {{cite Q|Q19095804 }}<!-- The opium revenue -->
* [[David F. Musto|Musto, David F.]] ''The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/morningofmylifei00nyegrich|title=The morning of my life in China : comprising an outline of the history of foreign intercourse from the last year of the regime of honorable East India Company, 1833, to the imprisonment of the foreign community in 1839|year=1873|author=Nye, Gideon|author-link=Gideon Nye}}
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/chinesewaraccoun00ouchrich|title=The Chinese war : an account of all the operations of the British forces from the commencement to the Treaty of Nanking|author=Ouchterlony, John|year=1844|publisher=London : Saunders and Otley}}
* Peters, Gretchen. ''Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda'', Thomas Dunne Books (2009).
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/oldestnewestempi00speerich|title=The oldest and the newest empire : China and the United States|author=Speer, William|year=1870|publisher=Hartford, Conn., S. S. Scranton and company; Philadelphia, Parmelee & co.; [etc., etc.]}}
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/iniquitiesofopiu00theluoft|title=The iniquities of the opium trade with China; being a development of the main causes which exclude the merchants of Great Britain from the advantages of an unrestricted commercial intercourse with that vast empire. With extracts from authentic documents|author=Thelwall, A. S.|year=1839|publisher=London : Wm. H. Allen and Co.}}
* {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/britishopiumpoli00turnrich|title=British opium policy and its results to India and China|year=1876|author=Turner, Frederick Storrs|publisher=London, S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington}}

== External links ==
{{sister project links|collapsible=true|wikt=opium|d=Q46452|c=Category:Opium|voy=no|species=no}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060507142511/http://www.plantcultures.org/pccms/action/showItem?id=387 A fleet of opium clippers on the River Ganges]
* [http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/currents/Content?oid=oid:67441 Confessions of a Poppy Tea addict]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929165608/http://www.dea.gov/concern/concern.htm DEA drug information]: Opium, morphine, and heroin
* [http://www.cia.gov/library/publications//heroin/flowers_to_heroin.htm From Flowers to Heroin]{{dead link|date=February 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}, CIA publication
* [https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/opium/opium.shtml Erowid: Opium]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070702212733/http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/political_science/opiumprod.html Opium in India]
* [http://www.wesjones.com/pollan1.htm ''Opium Made Easy''] by Michael Pollan (originally appeared in ''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's]]''.)
* [https://houseofopium.co House of Opium museum]
* [http://opioids.com/ BLTC Research]: Speculations on the future of opioids
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130228014209/http://www.thailex.asia/THAILEX/THAILEXENG/lexicon/opiumgebruik.htm Thailex photo]: Traditional method of using opium in Thailand
* [http://shezaf.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5:opium&catid=42:world-report&Itemid=118 Tsur Shezaf, Writer, The Opium Growers of Sinai] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091120163552/http://shezaf.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5:opium&catid=42:world-report&Itemid=118 |date=November 20, 2009 }}
* [https://visual.ly/users/driverhp123/portfolio UNODC – United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] – Afghan Opium Survey 2009
* "[https://books.google.com/books?id=p4o9AQAAIAAJ The Alkaloids of Opium]", [[Scientific American]], 20 July 1878, p.&nbsp;36, historical account on the physiological effects of the first 16 known alkaloids

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{{Chemical classes of psychoactive drugs}}
{{Opioidergics}}

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[[Category:Euphoriants]]
[[Category:IARC Group 1 carcinogens]]
[[Category:Medicinal plants]]
[[Category:Morphine]]
[[Category:Opioids]]
[[Category:Opium| ]]