The Opium Trade Today

The creation of tougher national and international laws in the late twentieth century has resulted in a slight transformation of the opium trade. Laws have become stricter and limited success has been made in raising public awareness concerning the dangerous nature of opium and its constituents. The trade has not stopped, however it has only changed hands. In the past, the demand for opium created a large and complex distribution chain, complete with opium producers, suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and consumers. Today, that trade, while now primarily in the form of nonmedical pharmaceutical use and heroin, is equally complex and perhaps even more profitable than ever. 

The illicit trade of opium is maintained today by a vast network of producers and traffickers who employ seemingly endless tactics to smuggle the product into nations around the world. 

The demand for opium remains—it is only the legality of the trade that has adjusted. Most nations today have laws banning the recreational use of opium and its constituents, as well as a system for controlling their use, so illegal drug traders have adjusted their efforts to exploit the weaknesses of the system. 

Traffickers typically buy opium from both legal and illegal producers. Lawhil producers, growing opium legitimately for the pharmaceutical industry, often earn greater income from the opium they sell on the side to black market traffickers. 

It is estimated that for every ounce of opium going to pharmaceutical companies and the production of medicines, 

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During the first centuries of the opium trade, the drug became popular not only in Asia but in the Western world as well. In Britain, especially, opium became an extremely important product, both within the country and for its economic attributes abroad. For much of this time, the British attitude toward opium was much like our modern view of coffee. The English, along with much of the rest of the Western world, viewed opium as a luxury and a pleasantry, albeit a mildly addictive one. Like coffee today, opium was realized to be mildly addictive, but it was not seen as a dangerous narcotic. 

In a report prepared for the University of Michigan s Institute of Social Research, Paul Hirsch described the product of Adorno s Radio Research Project. (20) According to Hirsch, the establishment of postwar radio s Hit Parade "transformed the mass medium into an agency of sub-cultural programming." Radio networks were converted into round-the-clock recycling machines that repeated the top 40 "hits." Hirsch documents how all popular culture — movies, music, books, and fashion — is now ran on the same program of preselection. Today s mass culture operates like the opium trade the supply determines the demand. 

Morphine is the principal alkaloid obtained from opium. Opium is the resinous latex that exudes from the seed pod of the opium poppy, Papver somneferum, when it is lacerated. Alkaloids account for approximately 25% of opium, and of this 25% about 60% is morphine. Remains of poppy seeds and pods have been found in Neolithic caves, indicating that the use of opium predates written history. The opium poppy is native to the eastern Mediterranean, but today it is chiefly cultivated from the Middle East through southern Asia and into China and Southeast Asia. The first civilization known to use opium was the Sumerians, who inhabited Mesopotamia in present-day western Iraq, around 3500 B.c.E. Sumerians traded opium with other civilizations, and this led to the cultivation of opium poppies and the production of opium in many geographic areas including Egypt, India, Persia (Iran), Southeast Asia, and China. 

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