Raymond Leslie Buell Quotes
The problem, therefore, reduced itself to [opium] production in Persia, Turkey, and Jugoslavia. The first of these countries declared that it could not restrict production without a loan of ten million tomans, customs autonomy, and a financial moratorium. The other two said that until other means of livelihood had been found for their peasant populations, production could not be limited.
“Tomans” were a quantity of money.
Raymond Leslie Buell, 1896 -1946, Political Scientist, President of the Foreign Policy Association of the United States, Description of early attempts to curtail world production of opium, “The Opium Conferences”, Foreign Affairs, July 1925
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Cixi had issued a 10 point edict designed to end opium use in China. One of its most interesting elements was that it only applied to Chinese under the age of 60. She recognized that for those elderly people who are thoroughly addicted to opium, prohibition would be to radical a change and their life expectancy was not very long. At the time, the average lifespan of Chinese was under 50.
There was an international conference on the worldwide drug problem.
Not only were there many opium users in the Philippines, but many of our occupying soldiers were introduced to opium and some became addicted. In that sense, it was like the Vietnam War.
He was the first Chinese official to make opium illegal. However, British many merchants were involved in a complicated trade scheme whereby they brought opium to Canton. They paid not attention to the new laws against opium the same as their Chinese customers. Lin Zexu, perceiving Queen Victoria to have powers equivalent to the Chinese Emperor who could do anything in China, He assumed that the Queen could and would control the merchant’s behavior, and before punishing the British merchants, he was putting the Queen on notice. There is no record of what Victoria did, if anything. When Lin Zexu tried to enforce his ban on opium, the British Merchants resisted and the First Opium War broke out between China and Britainin which the Chinese were humiliated and resent to this day. A bronze statue of Lin Zexu was erected in his honor in Chatham Square (Kimlau Square) of New York City's Chinatown.
British merchants and the East India Company made huge profits from the drug trade buying opium in India and selling it to China where it had become immensely popular. But when the Chinese (led by Lin Zexu) tried to ban the import of opium, the British fought two wars with China to force the reopening of the opium trade. At the end of the 20th century, some referred to England and the English Crown as the largest Drug Cartel in history.
Heroin and other drugs are made from poppies as a basal ingredient.
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York. Alcohol is medically and scientifically a drug and an addicting drug at that. The Jehovah's Witnesses also shun alcohol for that reason.
This is a particular fascinating quotation. First because the American liquor trade and Prohibition are paralleled to the opium trade in China. Second, is illustrates that the opium growing problem of the 21st century was virtually the same as that which existed at the beginning of the 20th century. The only difference is that the location moved from China to Afghanistan.
Opium addiction was ravaging Chinese society and the British were very large opium traders with most of the Chinese market. The moral and ethical argument fell on deaf ears and the British continued to sell opium to China. While it is hard to understand the British position today, consider the export sales of American cigarettes to the third world. A few countries have tried to legislate limits and restrictions and our State Department has kept all these markets open by threatening to restrict sales to the U. S. from those countries. The “logic” is that if the U. S. stopped exporting cigarettes, then the French or other country would move into the market or the local businesses would take over the cigarette trade. And cigarettes are far more lethal than opium. The British businessmen were convinced that there would be no reduction of use—the only difference would be who profits from the opium. A few years later the Opium Wars ensued.
It is not clear that Wright actually used these words of the first title or the editors created it. The substance is his and the second line is definitely his. At the time, the average American mistakenly thought that China had a much higher consumption rate.
Marijuana was and still is a health and social problem in that people who tend to use it---especially young people---tend not to focus on their friendships, their work and study obligations, their own development and welfare. However it is nowhere near the degree of deleterious problems of alcohol and other drugs like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. There is no record of anyone dying from an over dose or marijuana while alcohol and other drugs kill hundreds if not thousands a year. But none of those health emergencies compare with the flu which each year kills over 20,000 Americans who do not get inoculations or highway crashes which kill about 50,000. Yet Nixon did not characterize these as “national emergencies.”
