WI there was an opium crisis in ancient Rome?

What if through the silk road large amounts of opium began to flow to Rome and an addiction epidemic took hold, how would that have impacted society and how would the emperors have acted?
 
Opium was first used in the Mediterranean and was a popular trade good from at least ancient Egyptian times. It wasn't even introduced to China and India until after the Arab conquests.
 
Well, the opium wouldn't have been coming through the silk road- it was fairly widely cultivated in the Roman Empire and its use, for a variety of purposes, has extremely deep roots in the Near East. However, it seems like actual addiction to opium wasn't really a phenomenon, apart from supposedly Marcus Aurelius. Moreover, my understanding is that its consumption was somewhat self-limiting because it was either eaten mixed with some other food or brewed into a drink.
 
The big difference would be potency between opium then and heroin/fentanyl now.
It took a long time to refine and select more powerful strands. This was visible in China where opium used to be like offering a drink to someone. After the BEIC started pushing and refining it, only then did you have a crisis
 
Wow, so before the refinement it was just a pain reliever? Wow, way to ruin things. EIC.
Not an expert but as far as I remember, it's like between beer and gin. You could get wasted on beer and wine, but when people start downing pints of gin for breakfast, things tend to get worse
 
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