Which may or may not be true, but I assure you opiates have made a manful try ~ during the 1800s the Chinese regularly had at least 15% of their population "out of order" due to such use.
That equivalent would be 30 million Americans out of order due to chronic alcoholism. That's substantially greater than the accepted number of alcoholics in America, to wit, about 12 million.
“Out of order” on a permanent basis? Doubtful. Out of order due to temporary intoxication would be reasonable and would hardly imply heavy, continuous abuse. (Why do you think the Opium War was fought? To PREVENT recreational use of opiates? Or for Great Britain to CONTROL the trade?)
In this country, banning of SMOKABLE opium was done, quite openly, to discourage the “heathen chinee” from coming here and taking jobs or (as was stated in the campaign to outlaw said form of opium) to debauch white women in their evil opium dens. There was NOT any claim of which I am aware that there were medical issues with the use of opium. Only the demonization of the Chinese for using opium IN ITS SMOKABLE FORM. Same later for heroin and pot... their use was associated with blacks and Mexicans... and in every case, the use of these substances was said to lead to the debauchery of white women, who allegedly could not resist the black jazz musicians, the Mexicans, the Chinese, while under the evil influence of these horrible substances. THAT was the original attempt to outlaw recreational drugs. And, guess what, there has YET TO BE ANY CREDIBLE MEDICAL EVIDENCE THAT MODERATE USE OF ANY OF THESE SUBSTANCES WILL LEAD TO SERIOUS MEDICAL PROBLEMS. In fact, I have read recently that those who need opiates to deal with intractable pain have no upper limit on what they can take without harming themselves. They can take it until the pain goes away. Whereas a normal person would go into respiratory collapse or something and die from it. Of course, to your ilk, the drug warriors, giving people enough pain meds to actually WORK would be abhorrent, as the injured or dying person might actually get HIGH or something and feel GOOD... and THAT would never do for you, would it?
I stand very firmly by my statement that the problem we have with drugs is 100% caused by the drug LAWS.
"By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict."
--http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm
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"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992." [980,000 is about 0.33% of the population]
--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm
"The demand for both powdered and crack cocaine in the United States is high. Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."
--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm
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That works out to about a 1.5% addiction rate in 2000 vs 0.5% (1 in 200) in 1900.