Is heroin so passe?

[ferno]

The conclusion is that dealers have introduced people to drugs for financial gain.

The second conclusion is that policing of the problem has failed.

The question is, why has there been such a failure to control this illegality.

 

When drugs could be obtained legally in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no drug epidemic, and there were no profits for the drug pushers. Now, after 50 years of legislation, the problem is out of control.

[spooky3]

When drugs could be obtained legally in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no drug epidemic, and there were no profits for the drug pushers. Now, after 50 years of legislation, the problem is out of control.

 

So are you claiming that there weren't loads of opium dens! I think you need to go back and do your history again!

[harvey19]

When drugs could be obtained legally in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no drug epidemic, and there were no profits for the drug pushers. Now, after 50 years of legislation, the problem is out of control.

The question is, why has this situation been allowed to develop ?

[janie48]

When drugs could be obtained legally in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no drug epidemic, and there were no profits for the drug pushers. Now, after 50 years of legislation, the problem is out of control.

 

Perhaps people were happier.

[spooky3]

When drugs could be obtained legally in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no drug epidemic, and there were no profits for the drug pushers. Now, after 50 years of legislation, the problem is out of control.

 

 

How do you like these apples!

 

Although opium has been imported to Britain for hundreds of years for medicinal purposes it was not until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that its use as a pharmaceutical panacea and exotic recreational drug became epidemic within all strata of British society. Prior to the 1868 Pharmacy Act which restricted the sale of opium to professional pharmacists, anyone could legally trade in opium products: by the middle of the nineteenth century hundreds of opium based potions, pill, and patent medicines were available to the general public. Among the most famous preparations were Dover’s Powders, initially marketed as a cure for gout; Godfey’s Cordial which was sold as a “soother” for crying babies; and laudanum, a tincture of opium in alcohol, which was both easily made and readily available (Berridge, 24).

 

The widespread availability of the drug by the mid-nineteenth century was in no small part due to the expansion of the British Empire into India. In the eighteenth century opium had been imported chiefly from Turkey, which was not under British control. With the conquest of India Britain soon realised that the sub-continent could be utilised as a new source for the drug. In 1829 a physician called Dr. Webster exhibited at the Westminster Medical Society a specimen of pure opium which had been sent to him from Calcutta. Webster hoped that his fellow countrymen would see that “if it [opium] could be obtained from one colony, we should have it from thence rather ... than we should go to the rascally Turks” (Berridge, 4). In 1830 permission was granted from London to extend the cultivation of the opium poppy in India. By 1832 a report commented that “the monopoly of opium in Bengal supplies the government with a revenue amounting in sterling money to £981,293 per annum” (Booth, 115). To create the basis for this huge trading mechanism, whereby opium could be imported cheaply by Britain, and exported profitably to China, vast tracts of agricultural land were turned over to the growth of the opium poppy. In fact the profitable export of the drug to China was worth so much to the British Empire that two Opium Wars were fought, from 1839-42 and 1856-58, to preserve this valuable source of income and trade.

Opium Pod

 

The huge expansion of the growing of opium in India was of course to have great implications for the availability and subsequent use of the drug by its native population. Opium had been used in India long before the British came to its shores, but with the imperial expansion of the traditional growing of opium into a great capitalist venture, drug addiction inevitably increased among the native population. In a report in the New York Times of March 29 1896 the following graphic description of an opium den in Lucknow was given: “you will find yourself in a spacious but very dirty courtyard, around which are ranged fifteen or twenty small rooms. This is the establishment of the Government collector -the opium farmer. The stench is sickening, and the swarm of flies intolerable. Enter one of the small rooms. It has no windows and is very dark, but in the centre is a small charcoal fire, the glow of which lights up the faces of nine or ten human beings - men and women - lying on the floor like pigs in a sty. A young girl fans the fire, lights the opium pipe, and holds it to the mouth of the last comer till his head falls heavily on the body of the inert man or woman who happens to lie near him. In no groggery, in no lunatic or idiot asylum, will one see such utter, helpless depravity as appears in the countenances of those in the preliminary stages of opium drunkenness” (Schaffer, par. 6) The reporter suggests that up to 14,000 people in Lucknow alone were “abject slaves of this hideous vice.” This report suggests that to the late nineteenth century mind the image of opium was very much entangled with concepts of the Orient, of deviance, and sexual licentiousness in an Eastern context - a very different image of the drug than the pharmaceutical panacea it was seen as earlier in the century. In Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel Kim the author makes a pointed comment about the ready availability of opium in India and its power to addict and corrupt: Kim’s father “came across the woman who smoked opium and learned the taste from her, and died as poor whites died in India” (Kim, 1); later, a wicked priest plots to rob Kim’s Lama while he is under the influence of opium (Kim Ch.3).

http://www.qub.ac.uk/imperial/india/opium.htm

[ferno]

The question is, why has this situation been allowed to develop ?

 

Globally, the clampdown of heroin was in full swing by the mid 1950s

In 1956 the US made the supply of heroin to a minor a capital offence.

[JFKvsNixon]

No insult. It makes sense to you, but when have you ever called a heroin addict sensible. There's loads of reasons addicts would avoid those places...

 

Such as????

[JFKvsNixon]

It's obvious that they would move on to something else, are you really denying that!

 

What like?

[spooky3]

Such as????

 

Being on the list would probably invalidate any insurance, licenses, etc, others would just rather not admit it, e.g. politicians,police, doctors, etc...

 

 

As an addict would you want to go to town and have a nurse inject you, no you'd want to spend all night someplace chillin with their friends.

[JFKvsNixon]

Being on the list would probably invalidate any insurance, licenses, etc, others would just rather not admit it, e.g. politicians,police, doctors, etc...

 

 

As an addict would you want to go to town and have a nurse inject you, no you'd want to spend all night someplace chillin with their friends.

 

The information would be held in your private medical notes that are protected under law. Patient confidentiality would cover it.