"The two Opium Wars of 1839-–1842 and 1856 - –1860 between Britain and China, are recounted for the first time through the eyes of the Chinese as well as the Imperial West. Opium entered China during the Middle Ages when Arab traders brought it into China for medicinal purposes. As it took hold as a recreational drug, opium wrought havoc on Chinese society. By the early nineteenth century, 90 percent of the Emperor's court and the majority of the army were opium addicts.
Britain was also a nation addicted―to tea, grown in China, and paid for with profits made from the opium trade. When China tried to ban the use of the drug and bar its Western smugglers from it gates, England decided to fight to keep open China's ports for its importation. England, the superpower of its time, managed to do so in two wars, resulting in a drug-induced devastation of the Chinese people that would last 150 years.".
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Raid on an opium plantation
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"A poppy bulb oozes opium paste, in a field in Badakhshan Province. To harvest opium, farmers score the bulbs and then wait for the sticky paste to dry before scraping it into containers. Most of the opium is pressed into bricks and sent to refineries to be made into heroin, which is then smuggled out of Afghanistan. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that Afghan opium kills more people worldwide—up to 100,000 per year—than any other drug" - "National Geographic".
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Harvesting opium
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Opium den China
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Opium den - Indonesia
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