Opium Spreads further than China

Wolfpaw

Banned
Compared to the West, drugs weren't all that widespread in China.

In big cities it was a problem, especially in coastal regions where smuggling was rampant. But a lot of the hype is due to the draconian measures resorted to by the Chinese to suppress it and the Europeans to maintain it.

Compared this to the West, where there was:

Mass morphine addiction among veterans after the American Civil War and Britain's various colonial wars; Paris was drunk on absinthe and wormwood; street urchins in St. Petersburg were hawking cocaine to the Ballet crowds and slummers; Orthdox Jews smuggled drugs in their peyots and beards; Victoria and Grant both guzzled cocaine-laced wine while Sigmund Freud regularly coked up and recommended it as a panacea, to say nothing of needle-noshing A. C. Doyle and his famous Detective.
 
Compared to the West, drugs weren't all that widespread in China.

In big cities it was a problem, especially in coastal regions where smuggling was rampant. But a lot of the hype is due to the draconian measures resorted to by the Chinese to suppress it and the Europeans to maintain it.

Compared this to the West, where there was:

Mass morphine addiction among veterans after the American Civil War and Britain's various colonial wars; Paris was drunk on absinthe and wormwood; street urchins in St. Petersburg were hawking cocaine to the Ballet crowds and slummers; Orthdox Jews smuggled drugs in their peyots and beards; Victoria and Grant both guzzled cocaine-laced wine while Sigmund Freud regularly coked up and recommended it as a panacea, to say nothing of needle-noshing A. C. Doyle and his famous Detective.

Hmm..

We probably need some hard numbers. IIRC, sometghing like 15+% of the Chinese population were addicts, while in the US it was far lower - under 5%.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
I'll admit, I was under the impression as well that the mixture Holmes shot up with was 7% coke, 93% water. I don't think cocaine would have been "cut" as much since it was basically legal, so quality product was available.

Seems kinda esoteric to refer to it as a 7% solution because, "the quality of the Stuff is only about 7%. You see it's been cut, which means "mixed with something else," which lowers the quality. Now, standard Product quality--when cut--is higher than 7%, so Holmes is a pussy."
 
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