Wrong - the DEA's numbers showing low and declining opium addiction when it was legal constitute a 'statement against interest' and thus have credibility, unlike their self-serving misconclusions.Conversely they could represent a mistake and/or bad data. How they would get accurate data on drug addiction in 1880 is itself a cause for speculation.
If you have better numbers on U.S. drug addiction in 1880, I'd be fascinated to see them. Absent that, the available evidence is that U.S. opium addiction was low and declining when it was legal.
For China
China is not America, and there's no evidence that America's addiction rate was ever anything remotely like China's. Addiction experts tell us that culture and environment are important factors in addiction.
If you have better numbers on U.S. drug addiction in 1880, I'd be fascinated to see them. Absent that, the available evidence is that U.S. opium addiction was low and declining when it was legal. Given that widespread opium and Heroin usage mostly began due to the treatment of wounds suffered in the civil war, it is no great leap of faith to conclude that if usage declined, it was likely the result of death. Dying will reduce usage you know.
I would be suspicious of any hard numbers coming from this era because there was little reason for anyone to be keeping records of such things at that time.
China is not America, and there's no evidence that America's addiction rate was ever anything remotely like China's.
Of course it wasn't. In 1842 the Chinese legalized Opium. By 1900, half of Manchuria was addicted. We started pretty much in the 1863 era. By 1906 we started regulating drugs and in 1914 we started banning them. We never let it get as bad as China did because we took steps to stop it before it got that bad. Had we not taken these steps, we would have seen the same addiction rates that China suffered.
