Smoking opium

As use became more widespread, opium developed into a valuable commodity and worldwide trade grew. Although opium smoking is firmly affixed by folklorists to... 

In China, however, opium was a widespread social problem. Habitual opium smoking made people listless and unproductive. When the government tried to control the drug by taxes and tariffs, enterprising criminals set up black markets. In 1729, the Manchu dynasty went so far as to enact a law specifying that anyone who sold opium was to be strangled. 

In the U.S. opioid abuse was accentuated by the unrestricted availability of opium until the early years of the 20th century and by the influx of opium-smoking immigrants from the East. In addition, the invention of the hypodermic needle led to the parenteral use of morphine and to a more severe variety of compulsive drug abuse. 

In some developing countries, particularly around the poppy fields themselves, opium is used for its medicinal and recreational effects. Opium smoking and/or eating is still a problem in rural areas where the poppies are cultivated. By some estimates, perhaps as much as 25% of the opium produced in Southeast Asia is consumed by opium poppy farmers. 

The nepenthe (Gk "free from sorrow") mentioned in the Odyssey probably contained opium. Opium smoking was widely practiced in China and the Near East until recently. Isolation of active opium alkaloids and the introduction of the hypodermic needle, allowing parenteral use of morphine, increased opioid use in the West. The first of several "epidemics" of opioid use in the USA followed the Civil War. About 4% of adults in the USA used opiates regularly during the postbellum period. By the 1900s, the number had dropped to about 1 in 400 people in the USA, but the problem was still considered serious enough to justify passage of the Harrison Narcotic Act just before World War I. A new epidemic of opioid use started around 1964 and has continued unabated ever since. While fear of AIDS has reduced intravenous use of heroin, recent increases in its purity have led to markedly increased intranasal use. Present estimates are that the number of opioid-dependent people in the USA has stabilized at around 750,000. 

About 1000 B.C., Homer referred to the poppy plant in the Odyssey, where it was described as a tea. This tea was offered to travelers as a beverage of hospitality. - Ancient Greeks and Romans called opium a painkiller. But "joy poppies" were not cultivated in India and China before 1000 A.D., and opium smoking in the Far East did not begin until well after the fifteenth century. 

The infamous Opium Wars between Great Britain and China in the mid-1800s did not solve the problem for the Chinese. The victorious British compelled the Chinese to make restitution for damages and to allow the opium trade. By that time, Chinese farmers were producing opium at home and opium smoking had spread widely. ... 

Opium can be taken by mouth or it can be smoked, but since smoking was unknown in Europe and Asia until Columbus brought news of it from the New World, opium smoking did not exist before 1492. Many oral preparations of opium were made in the past. Two that survive into our own times are paregoric, a dilute tincture of opium combined with camphor, and deodorized tincture of opium, formerly known as laudanum, which is more, concentrated. 

Opiates are compounds extracted from the milky latex contained in the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). Opium, morphine, and codeine are the most important opiate alkaloids found in the opium poppy. Opium was used as folk medicine for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. In the seventeenth century opium smoking led to major addiction problems. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, morphine was isolated from opium. About 20 years later, codeine, one-fifth as strong as morphine, was isolated from both opium and morphine. In 1898, heroin, an extremely potent and addictive derivative of morphine was isolated. The invention of the hypodermic needle during the mid-nineteenth century allowed opiates to be delivered directly into the blood stream, which increases the effects of these drugs. Synthetically produced drugs with morphine-like properties are called opioids. The terms narcotic, opiate, and opioid are frequently used interchangeably. Some common synthetically produced opioids include meperidine (its trade name is Demerol) and methadone, a drug often used to treat heroin addiction. 

Heroin represents a logical choice for establishing inhalation procedures. Smoking and inhalation of heroin, known as "chasing the dragon," have largely replaced opium smoking for almost a century. 

Studies on risk factors for oesophageal cancer in the Caspian littoral of Iran carried out by lARC confirmed that the factors associated with the very high morbidity in this area included nutritional deficiencies and the chewing of the opium residues (dross or sukteh) from pipes or inhaled as opium smoke (Ghadirian et al. 1985). 

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