Posted on 06/26/2017 4:43:36 PM PDT by Antoninus
Believe it or not, June 26 is the International Day against Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking. In some circles in the US, advocating the legalization of recreational drugs is considered the correct, even "conservative" thing to do. Granted, these are less "conservative" circles than libertarian, but the cross-over is noticeable. For those with an historical horizon that extends back beyond the 1960s, there is no excuse for taking up this fashionable if foolhardy view.
The date of June 26 was chosen for the Day against Drug Abuse because it marks the anniversary of an event that could be known as the "Humen Opium Party" during which some 20,000 tons of contraband opium were dumped into the harbor at Humen in China.
Alarmed by the vast numbers of Chinese who had become addicted to opium, the Daoguang emperor appointed an official named Lin Zexu to cope with the problem. He was given the rank of "commissioner" and empowered to crush the opium trade.
Born in 1785, Commissioner Lin was the son of a prominent official in the Qing dynasty court. He soon achieved renown as an outstanding scholar and writer. During his early career, he established a reputation for intelligence and virtue, described by a more recent writer as: “a resolute and competent administrator, a just and fair applicator of the law and – most amazingly, bearing in mind his peers – incorruptible” [Booth, Opium, p. 129].
Unfortunately, at the heart of the issue were the merchants of a major foreign power — Great Britain. In order to balance out their trade deficit with China, the British began exporting opium into Chinese ports in large quantities. By the 1820s, opium had become the chief product exported into China by the British, with unsurprising results among the Chinese population. Following is a description of a typical opium den in China from a somewhat later source:
The room is four or five yards long and perhaps three wide low ceiling blackened with smoke and covered with black cobwebs. The floor is the bare earth the walls are black as soot save here and there where they are adorned with a few strips of red paper most of which bear inscriptions sounding like horrid mockery. Take one: "May all who enter here gain health and happiness." On all sides of this den are wooden benches like tables covered with a piece of matting and each furnished with lamp and pipe. Most of these were occupied with gaunt hollow eyed figures lying curled up some taking their first puffs others in different stages of prostration and stupefaction. [Taken from Friend of China, 1877, p. 106] Within a few months of his arrival at Canton, Commissioner Lin issued an edict demonstrating his resolve with typical Middle Kingdom contempt for foreigners:
“Let the Barbarians deliver to me every particle of opium on board their store-ships. There must not be the smallest atom concealed or withheld. And at the same time let the said Barbarians enter into a bond never hereafter to bring opium in their ships and to submit, should any be brought, to the extreme penalty of the law against the parties involved” [Hoe, The Taking of Hong Kong].
Commissioner Lin then posted a warning to the Chinese people of Canton which concluded as follows:
“Now then ye who smoke opium!...When ye take up the opium pipe to smoke, do one and all of you put the hand upon the heart, and ask yourselves: Do I deserve death or not? Ought I to leave off this hateful vice or not? People who have rebelled against heaven, who have injured their fellow-men, who have opposed reason, who have trampled on the five relations of mankind, who have set at defiance every rule of decency and propriety: methinks that though our sovereign’s laws may not slay them, yet with heaven and earth, gods and spirits, must exterminate them with their avenging lightning! Though you may escape our human punishments, think you that you can escape the punishment of heaven?” [Martin, Opium in China, p. 68].
But Lin's most audacious attempt to move the moral needle may have been a letter that he wrote directly to Queen Victoria, Britain's reigning monarch. While it is unclear whether the Queen actually read the letter or not, it ended up having little impact on the sad course of events. In the letter, Lin appeals to benevolence, justice, and logic:
"Suppose there were people from another country who carried opium for sale to England and seduced your people into buying and smoking it; certainly your honorable ruler would deeply hate it and be bitterly aroused. We have heard heretofore that your honorable ruler is kind and benevolent. Naturally you would not wish to give unto others what you yourself do not want.
We have also heard that the ships coming to Canton have all had regulations promulgated and given to them in which it is stated that it is not permitted to carry contraband goods. This indicates that the administrative orders of your honorable rule have been originally strict and clear. Only because the trading ships are numerous, heretofore perhaps they have not been examined with care. Now after this communication has been dispatched and you have clearly understood the strictness of the prohibitory laws of the Celestial Court, certainly you will not let your subjects dare again to violate the law."
Read Commissioner Lin's full Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria here.
Sadly, what Commissioner Lin failed to appreciate was just how far his own country had fallen behind the European West in terms of technological advances and military prowess. Caught somewhat off guard, the British merchants surrendered their opium under the pretense that their loss would be made good. Commissioner Lin proceeded to destroy all of the seized drug and cast it into the sea. The merchants were not compensated, and their perceived grievance soon precipitated a military response from the British. The result was the disastrous First Opium War. A reasonable summary of the depressing course of action during the war may be found here.
Following disastrous military defeats, the Qing court was forced to capitulate. For his role in the debacle, Commissioner Lin was demoted and exiled. The imperial court was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking which was the first of the so-called "Unequal Treaties" between China and the western powers. In short, Qing China was forced to pay reparations to the British merchants for the opium which was destroyed, open additional ports to western trade, and cede Hong Kong as a colony. China continued to be open to the opium trade which would consume untold lives for decades to come.
Later, the British came to regret their part in the Opium War. Philanthropist John Passmore Edwards called it, "One of the most unjust and iniquitous crimes ever perpetrated by one nation on another." Future prime minister William Gladstone opined in a similar fashion: "A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know and have not read of." In the same periodical, a Mr. Omrad gave a fair assessment of Commissioner Lin's effort, saying:
"I hold that Commissioner Lin served us just right when the opium that was to have destroyed his countrymen was instead destroyed by him, and I honor the patriotism and admire the pluck of the brave commissioner who dared to step forth in defense of his country, simple justice, and common humanity against a nation so great and powerful as our own." So for those in our own day who participate in the recreational drug trade, would attempt to legalize it, or simply to acquiesce in the face of those political forces which seek to make these toxins more easily available in the name of "liberty", I would ask you to consider history. Understand that the wages paid by your intellectual ancestors were evil, destruction and death. You may succeed in making the use of such substances legal in this world, but like the British, you will not escape the punishment of heaven.
Some states have drawn the line at pot. Does a line that 'society' has drawn trump the 10th Amendment?
History channel just ran a 4 part series on how these killer drugs were brought to the USA via CIA to fund their covert activities and how Presidents, congress just ignored it. Flew then crap from Laos during Nam via Air America. 1-2 soldiers OD’D daily, and how LSD was introduced into USA, spreading rapidly in black communities, Dems demanded LONG prison terms to break up the black family unit.
http://www.history.com/shows/americas-war-on-drugs
SIMPLE explanation, as I’m typing with 1 finger, R. hand is in a tight cast following hand surgery.
But locking people up rather than making them productive seems a better approach. Either way...we get to $$$ for it.
Opium was legal in the USA for centuries, and use never got anywhere near China levels.
“Genetic factors account for about half of the likelihood that an individual will develop addiction. Environmental factors interact with the person’s biology and affect the extent to which genetic factors exert their influence. Resiliencies the individual acquires (through parenting or later life experiences) can affect the extent to which genetic predispositions lead to the behavioral and other manifestations of addiction. Culture also plays a role in how addiction becomes actualized in persons with biological vulnerabilities to the development of addiction.” - American Society of Addiction Medicine
If ease of concealment were no longer an issue - as it wouldn't be with legalization - people might well stick to less harmful drugs like marijuana.
They won't. They'll be right out there in the open destroying themselves
The ones who are deep into addiction, perhaps - but even an addict can say to himself, "The better I keep my drugs hidden, the better my chance of getting to use them."
--and many more than there are today.
So you claim.
And guess who will pay for their numerous attempts at rehab?
Any jurisdiction that votes to do so (or votes for representatives who propose to do so).
IF there's a substantial increase in addictions, and IF our elected representatives decide to pick up the tab. What I AM paying for RIGHT NOW and have been for decades is the War on Drugs.
Yes it is, but since it has been present in Human history as far back as 3 million years, I would have to say that horse has already left the barn a long time ago.
After a hard dayz work in state houses and up in D.C. legislating against all manner of drugs...law makers slap one another on the back and meet at the local drug flop house...oh, I mean the pub to throw back a few scotch and sodas.
Tawk about hypocrisy at it's finest.
Well hypocrisy is bad, but it doesn't justify creating a new method by which people can be led to harder drugs.
This is a statement I *ALWAYS* hear from someone who has not done the proper degree of research as to the American History of Drug usage and exposure.
In the early stages of this nation, there was little access to the stuff, and most people considered it to be a medicine. Nobody was shipping tonnage amounts of this stuff into our harbors. When it arrived, it was in a few bottles and those relatively small in number.
The Civil War changed everything. The Wounded in the Civil War on both sides could have their pain alleviated with Opium and Cocaine, and both sides sought to get as much of the drug as was possible. In the aftermath of the Civil War, both the North and the South ended up with hundreds of thousands of wounded men who were now addicted to Opium and Cocaine. (But mostly Opium.)
Addiction among service men became so common that they started referring to it as "The Soldiers Disease."
Add to this efforts by companies such as Coca Cola to supply Cocaine in their soft drinks, and by the 1890s, people were noticing a lot of serious problems caused by these drugs.
The Difference between the US and China is that China already had much history with Opium, and they had large supplies of it in their own country and being brought in by the British. As the addiction habits in the US were growing worse, suppliers were stepping into the market to fill these demands. Given enough time, we would have gone down the same road as China. Fortunately the Federal government stepped in, banned the substances, and stopped this addiction epidemic before it got much worse.
Opium and cannabis have been used by natives/indigenous people for thousands of years. It's only fairly recent it has become an illegal substance. Most civilizations used plant based remedies as medicine or in religious ceremony.
The bulk of the US population is not indigenous. Western people's have no long association with these drugs.
It's only fairly recent it has become an illegal substance.
So? It's only fairly recent that Opium and Cocaine became an illegal substance. They are still dangerous.
Most civilizations used plant based remedies as medicine or in religious ceremony.
So? I don't think most of the demand out there is to use weed in "religious ceremonies." Most of these people just want to get stoned.
Just my opinion. We obviously disagree...and that's ok.
I can appreciate the view, however that was almost two hundred years ago. It is a different dynamic now and the drug war is the longest running war in US history.
We do not have the stomach to execute drug dealers, or invade nations that harbor narco-cartels, and we fail to realize that the drug war has been responsible for more Constitutional challenges and case law than any other source.
It has led to the proliferation of drug gangs, in which there are well over a million documented members of all ethnicities and races. They export violence on each in unprecedented scale outside of wartime, and it causes liberals to push for more gun control. Conservatives in turn push back, and now we are nation armed and seething, almost to the point of civil war level violence.
I worked the drug war full time for five years, surveillance, raids, asset forfeiture, Title 3 wiretaps, the whole bit.
When I was done I realized I had not make one bit of difference and the taxpayer costs associated with what I was involved in was astronomical.
The dirty little secret that law enforcement and the courts don’t want you to know is that we were never winning and we are no longer holding the line. We are retrograding slowly but surely, and it does not help that few want to enter the field anymore, thanks to Brown and Baltimore as the two main offenders.
My main objective is to see the violence be seriously curtailed, I care not if adults put chemicals in their body. How many people would take it to the streets if liquor or fast food were outlawed?
I also don’t want to use China as a metric for anything.
This was 1 of the better pieces that the History channel has run. They laid out the dirty laundry on both parties. It fit most of what informed people actually know. Which is rare for them, as they slant to the left, green crapola usually.
They didn’t carry it back enough in my opinion, because it went back to the Civil War, and before that to quack cures being peddled high in booze, coke, laudanum, or heroin or a combo. Nor did they touch on the long history of opium use in the ASIAN and M.E countries.
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