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War_Hymn t1_izmxiwg wrote

I just wanted to mention that in the period between the 1830s to the end of WWII, China was basically the largest unregulated narcotic market in the entire world. Concessions to foreign powers left the Chinese government(s) unable to restrict or stop shipments of foreign narcotics coming into their country (or unwilling, as they were often involved and benefited from the trade itself) .

Every major nation wanted to get in on the action. The British having defeated the Chinese in war and forced them to accept their opium, were eagerly joined by the French, Dutch, Americans, Germans, and of course, Japanese. By the start of the 20th century, these foreign narcotic importers were moving on to harder stuff - morphine, heroin, and cocaine had been developed and they flooded the enormous Chinese market with the new drugs.

For them, the stronger potency of these refined drugs meant less bulk and weight had to be shipped to serve their overseas markets. The Dutch set up coca plantations on Java to directly produce refined cocaine for the Asiatic market. Japan, not wanting to miss out on the action, also started coca plantations in their new colony of Formosa (modern-day Taiwan). By 1920, it is estimated that combined heroin and cocaine imports into China amounted to 1500 tonnes per year.

Luckily for the Chinese, the Americans after WWI were heading international efforts and treaties to curb the global narcotic trade. Having experienced the bane of epidemic substance abuse in the aftermath of the American Civil War - and now seeing a resurgence of it in returning American soldiers at the end of the Great War, American politicians were adamant in pushing the British and other foreign powers to put a stop to their involvement in the global drug trade. Drugs that were prohibited in their own home countries, but which they hypocritically had no qualms selling and pushing to the Chinese and even their own colonies (the French colonial government directly distributed opiates to their Vietnamese and Laotian subjects in French Indochina).

The British and other powers whinge and moaned about the proposals to impede or stop their lucrative trade and tried to stall, but American eventually strong-armed them to signing and ratifying the first set of international anti-narcotic treaties in modern history. For the British, pressure had ironically, come in the form of Japanese cocaine that was flooding their colony of India, starting massive and disruptive drug epidemics there.

The French signed, but continued to distribute opiates to their colonial possessions in Indochina - even while the colony was being invaded and occupied by the Japanese during WWII. This odd situation gave the cooperating French colonial government the bright idea of growing and refining opium in Indochina itself instead of importing it from the now blockaded Middle East, laying the seeds of what will eventually be known as the Golden Triangle.

The Japanese, who signed these same treaties - continued to allow their firms to produce and distribute cocaine and opiates on the international market - now getting a bigger piece of the pie as other foreign powers had pulled out from the trade due to American pressure. When confronted by the other powers about their continuation in the trade, they simply shrugged their shoulders and acted innocent (even when seized drug shipments had boxes and packaging bearing the emblem of Japanese pharmaceutical firms). For China, their situation would have to worsen before getting better, as invasion and occupation by the Japanese bought increased availability of narcotic drugs to the country's millions of addicts.

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DaveyGee16 t1_izncxvu wrote

Some of your ideas and characterizations are wrong. In fact, pretty much everything you wrote is wrong.

Heroin, cocaine and morphine were not “harder stuff” and weren’t designed for export to China. They were available off the shelf pretty much everywhere in Europe, North America and the rest of the world.

Cocaine didn’t become a controlled drug in the U.S. until 1914, 1920 in the U.K.

Your ideas on heroin are wholesale wrong, it was first synthesized in 1874, it wasn’t commercialized until 1895. It was banned in 1924 in the U.S. but was available off the shelf until then. 1920 in the U.K.

Opium, much the same as the other two, not banned until the 1920s anywhere.

You are conflating a bunch of ideas without proof, drugs weren’t used to control colonial possessions, they were normal every day consumer items everywhere in the West too.

Furthermore, your ideas on the U.S. fighting to stop the drug trade and the U.K. stalling is also wrong, in most cases, the U.K. banned drugs before the U.S. did. An even worse comparison to suggest when you know more on the subject. The U.K. was a signatory to The Hague convention on opium of 1912 which restricted the sale and consumption of opium, including in their trade with other nations and in the colonies, the U.S. was not.

Your ideas on drugs in the golden triangle being because of the French is preposterous. The Golden Triangle appeared because the communist Chinese outlawed the domestic opium trade in southern China, the growers and dealers shifted south in the 1950s following action by the Chinese.

Your ideas on Japan are equally wrong. The Japanese didn’t “flood” colonial India with cocaine, that’s just plain preposterous. Nor did the Japanese play a major part in the Chinese opium trade, you are either reading the wrong material or you aren’t reading well. The Japanese made a fortune from the drug trade in Taiwan after they acquired it with Shimonoseki.

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WhittlingDan t1_izoxizg wrote

>drugs weren’t used to control colonial possessions, they were normal every day consumer items everywhere in the West too.

It was both and still is both, governments and wealthy "organizations" often connected to governments use drugs both for profit and control. Sonetimes control/benefit works both directions such as financing other "darker" expenses and operations while also destabilizing where they are sold. The CIA was behind the Cocaine/Crack epidemic in the US decades ago. It funded many different operations in the US and other countries, it destabilized and financed coups while also destroying black and other minority communities especially in the inner cities. It fed on the desperation and lack of opportunity.

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War_Hymn t1_izpm2p6 wrote

>heroin, cocaine and morphine were not “harder stuff”

You're really going to tell us a glass of whiskey isn't harder hitting than a glass of beer?

The term "harder" is sort of subjective, but I use it here on the basis that heroin/morphine/cocaine are all processed and concentrated products of the natural raw material that they are derived from. Raw opium doesn't contain 100% morphine - it's around 10% by mass.

Refining processes remove the non-psychoactive components and impurities from the base material, isolating /concentrating the components that do have a narcotic effect. For a given dose in mass or volume, heroin or cocaine is more potent than raw opium or coca leaves - cocaine production being the most dramatic change in concentration as the leaves typically contain less than 0.3% active cocaine chloride.

>and weren’t designed for export to China.

Never said they were, just pointing to their presence in the Chinese market. Old-fashion opium was still being imported (and produced domestically) by the ton into China at this time if I recall.

>Your ideas on heroin are wholesale wrong, it was first synthesized in 1874, it wasn’t commercialized until 1895. It was banned in 1924 in the U.S. but was available off the shelf until then. 1920 in the U.K.

I believe I did say "by the start of the 20th century" - if you're unfamiliar with this nomenclature, it means "early-1900s".

>Furthermore, your ideas on the U.S. fighting to stop the drug trade and the U.K. stalling is also wrong, in most cases, the U.K. banned drugs before the U.S.

Maybe, I'm a little vague on my dates and details in this regard. I'll have to reread my sources. Still, the Americans did indeed pushed for wider international collaboration in restricting narcotic trade and production, and they did faced resistance from other nations.

>Your ideas on drugs in the golden triangle being because of the French is preposterous. The Golden Triangle appeared because the communist Chinese outlawed the domestic opium trade in southern China, the growers and dealers shifted south in the 1950s following action by the Chinese.

I agree it's a subjective take open to bias and interpretations from both sides (colonial apologists vs. anti-colonial critics), but it doesn't change the fact that wartime French colonial officials were encouraging cultivation of poppies among local Miao/Hmong farmers for the purpose of producing opium. Whether that encouraged the wider intensive cultivation of opium in post-war Southeast Asia, I leave to more qualified scholars to argue over.

>Your ideas on Japan are equally wrong. The Japanese didn’t “flood” colonial India with cocaine

My sources tell me otherwise.

Excerpt from "Cocaine - An Unauthorized Biography" by Dominic Streatfeild:

->Such was the extent of the Japanese-Indian cocaine trade that in 1930 the Home Office despatched a Mr J Slattery, OBE, to the Far East to find what was going on. His secret report is in the Public Records Office at Kew. Slattery discovered that much of the cocaine being shifted bore the labels of Fujitsuru, Buddha, or Elephant brands, yet none of these were recognized manufacturers...Clearly of the impression that this cocaine all originated in Japan, Slattery could obtain no assistance from the Japanese authorities. Slattery had the wrappings of a Fujitsuru cocaine package analysed to see who made the paper. He was informed, and it was later corroborated, that it was made by the Fuji Company of Japan, and the string that held the package together was also Japanese.

>Nor did the Japanese play a major part in the Chinese opium trade

Please be aware I'm talking about Japan in the larger context of the 19th/20th century narcotic trade in China, so beyond the scope of the earlier Opium Wars period. As the original post hinted, the Japanese DID peddled opiates and other narcotics to the Chinese, something that the Japanese culprits faced charges for during the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

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Yugan-Dali t1_iznfi5h wrote

I had never heard of coca grown for cocaine in Taiwan. Do you have any sources (English or Chinese) where I could learn more? Thanks ~

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eranam t1_iznrcod wrote

Not original commenter (and long read in the source) but:

“In the 1920s, in order to save money on importing coca leaf from South America, Japan’s pharmaceutical companies determined to set up coca plantations in Taiwan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and also purchased from Dutch growers in Java, who had been cultivating coca there since the 1850s (Karch 1999, 147, 156).

Company and Taiwan Shoyaku companies, on a combined 694 acres of land in the Taiwanese interior, produced a total of 700,814 kilograms of coca leaf between 1927 and 1931, about one- fifth of which was transferred to Japan for processing; the rest was processed into crude cocaine by those companies’ factories in Taiwan.18 Karch calculates the total production of coca leaf in Taiwan during these years at around 150,000 tons per year, which, once processed into cocaine, would have yielded around seven tons per year (1999, 155–156).”

Source

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Yugan-Dali t1_izo0kr6 wrote

Wow, that’s really interesting, thank you!

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War_Hymn t1_izpajoq wrote

My information comes from "Cocaine - An Unauthorized Biography" by Dominic Streatfield - basically covers the entire history of coca and cocaine from the time of the Incas to the coke epidemic of the 1980s. A great read.

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Law_Equivalent t1_iznqzgz wrote

Morphine was never developed, and it's impossible morphine is "harder" than opium, the reason opium gets you high is because of the morphine naturally in it mainly.

Heroin also has an extremely short half life and turns into morphine in the body extremely fast, so I wouldn't characterize it as harder than morphine either.

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War_Hymn t1_izp9zyi wrote

>it's impossible morphine is "harder" than opium, the reason opium gets you high is because of the morphine naturally in it mainly.

So you're going to tell me a glass of whiskey (40% ABV) isn't harder hitting than the same size glass of beer (5% ABV)?

Refining opium into morphine or heroin removes the non-narcotic components and impurities in the natural product. The resulting product is much more concentrated in psychoactive agents, hence has a stronger effect for a given dose.

>Morphine was never developed

Morphine was first isolated in 1804/1805 by German chemist Friedrich Serturner - by 1817 he had started a pharmaceutical company to produce and market the new drug as an analgesic. Heavy use of morphine in medical treatment during the American Civil War (and the mass opiate epidemic it spawned in its aftermath) is so well documented that I'm surprise anyone would even try to refute it.

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Law_Equivalent t1_izv08ha wrote

"The resulting product is much more concentrated in psychoactive agents, hence has a stronger effect for a given dose. "

If stronger effect for a given dose determines how "hard" a drug is than LSD would be a harder drug than meth or heroin...

Do you think LSD or Meth is a harder drug?

Meth?

Ok than why do you keep repeating this nonsense about potency determining how "hard" a drug is?

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War_Hymn t1_izw3v1m wrote

>Do you think LSD or Meth is a harder drug?

Which ever has the stronger psychoactive effect. If you say LSD, than I guess it's LSD.

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Law_Equivalent t1_izv24ws wrote

From this peer reviewed article it says

"The effects of opium are essentially those of morphine but unexpected toxicities, suck as oesophageal cancer associated with “dross opium” and polyneuropathy due to deliberate addition of arsenic, are problems in some specific regions"

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1997.tb03197.x

If the effects are the same between two different substances but one has more risks than the other the one with more risks is the harder substance, Therefore opium is harder than "morphine ".

Both dextroamphetamine(an ingredient in Adderall) and meth have the same exact effects but meth is known as a harder drug because of the risks of using it.

Don't believe me?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3475187/ Concordant with the literature obtained with laboratory animals, direct comparisons of the effects of oral methamphetamine and d-amphetamine in HUMANS indicate the drugs produce overlapping effects on measures of cardiovascular activity, mood, and drug discrimination 14,1516 Finally, data from studies comparing the two amphetamines on measures believed to be predictive of abuse potential (i.e., drug discrimination and self-administration) indicate that equivalent doses of the drugs produced similar responses, further indicating that the drugs are equipotent 11,12,13 Recreational methamphetamine use is purportedly used in larger doses via routes of administration that produce a more rapid onset of effects (e.g., intranasal, intravenous, and smoked: [17]). The onset speed of drug-related effects is a critical determinant of the intensity of mood and behavioral effects of a drug 18,19. Thus, it is possible that potential differences between methamphetamine and d-amphetamine may only be detected following a route of administration associated with a faster onset of effects

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War_Hymn t1_izw3nsj wrote

>If the effects are the same between two different substances but one has more risks than the other the one with more risks is the harder substance, Therefore opium is harder than "morphine ".

I'm sorry friend, but I assumed it was obvious that I was pointing to the narcotic effects when I suggested morphine/heroine to be "harder" substances. I didn't think most people would think I was talking mainly or solely about chronic health effects of said drugs when I use the adjective term.

On a side note, if you're some sort of avid heroin/morphine/drug enthusiast or proponent that I somehow offended with my academic take on the historic opiate trade, then you should know that I don't have any personal "experience" with the narcotic substances that we are discussing here. I don't smoke tobacco, used marijuana maybe a few times in college, and barely drink as it is. My interests in the discussed drugs are purely academic, and I didn't post my comment with the intention of pushing any sort anti-drug "heroin or morphine is evil" agenda. All I know is refined morphine has more morphine than raw opium / cocaine has way more cocaine chloride than coca leaves. How they affect people when partake, I have to take such info from others.

PS: Now that I think about it, I did get some IV morphine during a surgery and recovery in my young teens. It was pretty good stuff, and helped take the pain off my collapsed lung and broken ribs.

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