Papaver Somniferum L.

Poppy, Papaver somniferum L., is an annual herb native to Southeastern Europe and western Asia.
Also known as opium poppy, the species is cultivated extensively in many countries, including Iran, Turkey, Holland, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, India, Canada, and many Asian and Central and South American countries. Reaching a height of 1.2 meters, the erect plant can have white, pink, red, or purple flowers. Seeds range in color from white to a slate shade that is called blue in commercial classifications.

The reported life zone of poppy is 7 to 23 degrees centigrade with an annual precipitation of 0.3 to 1.7 meters and a soil pH of 4.5 to 8.3 (4.1-31). The plants grow best in rich, moist soil and tend to be frost sensitive.

A latex containing several important alkaloids is obtained from immature seed capsules one to three weeks after flowering. Incisions are made in the walls of the green seed pods, and the milky exudation is collected and dried. Opium and the isoquinoline alkaloids morphine, codeine, noscapine, papaverine, and thebaine are isolated from the dried material. The poppy seeds and fixed oil that can be expressed from the seed are not narcotic, because they develop after the capsule has lost the opium-yielding potential (11.1-128). Total yield of alkaloids is dependent on light, temperature, the plant species, and the time of harvest (5.2-4).

Poppy seeds are used as a condiment with baked goods and pastries for their nutty odor and flavor. Poppy oil is widely used as an edible cooking oil. The oil is also used in the manufacture of paints, varnishes, and soaps (14.1-35). Opium is used in the production of morphine, codeine, other alkaloids, and deodorized forms of opium (14.1-35). Morphine is the raw material from which heroin is obtained. Poppy plants are important as ornamental plants in flower gardens.

Poppy is one of the most important medicinal plants. Traditionally, the dry opium was considered an astringent, antispasmodic, aphrodisiac, diaphoretic, expectorant, hypnotic, narcotic, and sedative. Poppy has been used against toothaches and coughs. The ability of opium from poppy to serve as an analgesic is well known. Opium and derivatives of opium are used in the pharmaceutical industry as narcotic analgesics, hypnotics, and sedatives. These compounds are also used as antidiarrheals, antispasmodics, and antitussives (14.1-35). Opium and the drugs derived from opium are addictive and can have toxicological effects.

The poppy has had a tremendous impact on several societies as an opiate. Currently, there is interest in developing a poppy plant rich in thebaine and low in morphine as the former could be converted to codeine and other legal pharmaceutical products with less morphine available for illegal conversion into heroin.

Papaver rhoeus L., known as corn or field poppy, is an annual herb native to Europe and Asia. Extracts of the plant are used in medicine and beverages. The alkaloids rhoeadine, morphine, and papaverine have been reported in this species (14.1-32). Papaver orientale L., formerly Papaver bracteatum Lindl., is a morphine-free alkaloid source used for medicinal purposes. Mexican or prickly poppy, Argemone mexicana L., has been reported to have toxicological properties but no substantial medicinal uses have been recorded (11.1-136).

Poppy seed is generally recognized as safe for human consumption as a spice or a natural flavoring (21 CFR section 182.10 [1982]).

Endogenous Opioids

We are all naturally dependent on opioids for our emotional health. Both narcotics and internally generated endorphins exert their action on the body by interacting with specific membrane receptor-proteins on our nerve cells.

The body produces three large pro-compounds: proenkephalin, prodynorphin, and pro-opiomelanocortin. Endorphins can further decompose to small fragments, oligomers, which are still active. Oligomers pass the blood-brain barrier more readily. Enzymatic degradation of small-chain endorphins is accomplished by dipeptidyl carboxypeptidase, enkephalinases, angiotensinases, and other enzymes. This limits their lifetime in the unbound state.

Opioid receptors presynaptically inhibit transmission of excitatory pathways. These pathways include acetylcholine, the catecholamines, serotonin, and substance P. Substance P is a neuropeptide active in neurons that mediate our sense of pain; antagonists of substance P are currently under investigation as clinical antidepressants. Endorphins are also involved in glucose regulation. Opioid receptors are functionally designated as mu, delta, kappa, etc. These categories can be further sub-classified by function or structure. Decoding the human genome has allowed the genetic switching-mechanisms that control the expression of each opioid receptor to be determined at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level.

All classes of opioid receptor share key similarities. Opioid-driven inhibition of neuronal excitability is mediated by the activation of a variety of potassium channels in the plasma membrane. The disparate subjective and behavioural effects evoked by activation of the different categories of opioid receptor are typically not the outcome of different cellular responses, but reflect the different anatomical distributions of each receptor. Unlike kappa opioid receptors, however, both mu and delta opioid receptors internalise on exposure to agonists. Activation of any type of opioid receptor inhibits adenylate cyclase, resulting in a fall in intracellular cAMP and diminished action potential firing. This causes a reduced flow of nociceptive information to the brain. Conversely, opioid addicts undergoing withdrawal suffer elevated cAMP levels and enhanced protein kinase A activity, resulting in increased neurotransmitter release.

The opioid receptors all have a common general structure. They are characteristically G protein-linked receptors embedded in the plasma membrane of neurons. Once the receptors are bound, a portion of the G protein is activated, allowing it to diffuse within the plasma membrane. The G protein moves within the membrane until it reaches its target - either an enzyme or an ion channel. These targets normally alter protein phosphorylation and/or gene transcription. Whereas protein phosphorylation alters short-term neuronal activity, gene transcription acts over a longer timescale.

Two new classes of opioid neuropeptide have recently been identified. These are nociceptin and the endomorphins.

Nociceptin (also known as orphanin) was first identified in 1995. It is the endogenous ligand of the opioid receptor-like 1 receptor. Depending dosage and site, nociceptin has subjectively extremely nasty hyperalgesic effects. Nociceptin receptor antagonists are candidate antidepressants and analgesics.

Endomorphin₁ and endomorphin₂ are newly-discovered ligands with the highest affinity and selectivity for the mu opioid receptor of all the endogenous opioids. Critically, endomorphin₁ increases dopamine efflux in the nucleus accumbens via mu-1 opioid receptors. In the absence of selective endogenous mu-opioid receptor agonists, our vulnerability to pain and suffering would be even worse. Several novel, peripherally administered endomorphin₁ analogues are under investigation that are more resistant to enzymatic hydrolysis. They should offer new opportunities for euphoric well-being, enriched mental health and more effective pain-relief.

Morphine itself is produced naturally by the human body and brain, albeit in much lower concentrations than in the opium poppy Papaver somniferum. Morphine is synthesised in human neuroblastoma cells via a biosynthetic route similar to that of the opium poppy. It is also present in healthy neurons, where it undergoes Ca²⁺-dependent release suggestive of a neurotransmitter or neuromodulator role. But the physiological role of endogenous morphine is still obscure.

Opioidergic neurons are particularly concentrated in the ventral tegmental area. The VTA is an important nerve tract in the limbic system. The VTA passes messages to clusters of nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. This forms the brain's primary reward pathway, the mesolimbic dopamine system. Its neurons are called dopaminergic because dopamine is manufactured, transported down the length of the neuron, and packaged for release into the synapses.

GABA normally plays a braking role on the dopaminergic cells. Opioids and endogenous opioid neurotransmitters activate the presynaptic opioid receptors on GABA neurons. This inhibits the release of GABA in the ventral tegmental area. Inhibiting GABA allows the dopaminergic neurons to fire more vigorously. The release of extra dopamine in the nucleus accumbens is intensely pleasurable.

Both delta opioid agonists and inhibitors of enkephalin catabolism have anxiolytic and antidepressant activity. Kappa opioid receptor antagonists have antidepressant activity; the first orally active selective kappa receptor antagonist is the investigational drug JDTic. Mu receptor activation is crucial to the rewarding, analgesic and addictive properties of opioids. Government researchers and pharmaceutical companies are searching for powerful analgesics that won't make the user feel happy ["high"] too.

Mu-receptors are found mainly in the brainstem and the medial thalamus. There are two primary sub-types: mu-1 and mu-2. More than 100 polymorphisms have been identified in the human mu opioid peptide receptor gene. Stimulation of the mu-1 receptors is primarily responsible for the beautiful sense of euphoria, serenity and analgesia induced by a potent and selective mu opioid agonist. Receptor activation by mu opioid agonists increases cell firing in the ventral tegmental area. This triggers dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens by reducing GABA's tonic inhibitory control of the dopaminergic neurons. By contrast, at the height of the opioid withdrawal syndrome, typical firing rates and burst firings of VTA-nucleus accumbens neurons are reduced to around 30% of normal. The withdrawal syndrome can be quickly remedied by the administration of a potent mu agonist such as morphine. Care is needed: stimulation of the mu-2 opioid receptors helps modulate respiratory depression. For obvious reasons, this is potentially dangerous. The endogenous ligands for the mu opioid receptors have recently been discovered. They are endomorphin-1 (Tyr-Pro-Trp-Phe-NH2, EM-1) and endomorphin-2 (Tyr-Pro-Phe-Phe-NH2, EM-2).

Unfortunately, we still lack clinically available opioids specific to the mu-1 receptor. Their advent will (potentially) be a tremendous boon to mental and physical health.

Afghan War Machine

Just as dawn was breaking over the Afghan capital one day last month, Zafir, a greengrocer in Kabul's main fruit and vegetable bazaar, loaded up his clattering Russian-made Kamaz lorry with water melons and set off on a 72-hour drive.

A 32-year-old father of two, Zafir was on duty for the Taliban, playing a vital part in the billion-dollar dealing that keeps the Afghan war well-oiled.

He ferried his cargo north along bonebreaking mountain tracks and the searing heat of desert trails. On the checkpoints of the civil war, the bearded gunmen gave him a nod and a wink and ushered him onward.

Zafir kept behind the Taliban lines on his journey which ended in the Taliban-held northern capital of Mazar-i-Sharif where he dumped his lorryload of fruit.

The water melons were snapped up. But secreted among the large green globes for other customers was a cache of dozens of kilograms of high-grade heroin recently processed from the poppy harvest in a Taliban-run factory in the eastern town of Jalalabad.

The stamped 1kg cotton bags of snow-white powder, each one declaring its source and refining date, were passed on to the Taliban's central Asian trafficking mafia, hidden in new vehicles, and dispatched to two ex-Soviet republics two hours' drive from Mazar to the north and the west.

"The cars come back and forth. I just take it to Mazar and sell it on to the guys who come in cars from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. I do it twice a month," Zafir explains.

From there the contraband wends its way up into the Urals in Russia, takes a left turn, heads for Moscow and St Petersburg before being smuggled onward to western Europe - 90% of the heroin injected in Frankfurt, Barcelona or Edinburgh originates in Taliban Afghanistan.

"Our dear friends, the Taliban commanders, they take the stuff from Kandahar and Jalalabad to Kabul," says Zafir, an alias agreed to protect his identity. "We take it on to Mazar and to Kunduz."

For the past five years Zafir has been a bit-player in the lucrative rackets that make millionaires of Afghan warlords and keep the Taliban fighters in guns, food, and fuel. "I've been working in the heroin business since the Taliban seized Kabul [in 1996]."

Brown-haired, blue-eyed in a turban, pale pink tunic, and black trainers, Zafir sweats anxiously as he discloses the details of the Taliban's heroin trafficking after agreeing to meet at a quiet spot in the mountains north-west of Kabul.

He nervously unwraps a black-and-white kerchief on the back seat of an old Russian jeep with blacked-out windows. Inside are several thousand dollars worth of the purest heroin. The white cotton bag inside sealed cellophane is stamped purple with the name of the refinery, the number 555, and the year 2001.

The packaging betrays a certain element of honour among thieves, with those involved easily traceable should the heroin prove to be sub-standard.

"This is from the Taliban factory in the Shinwar district of Jalalabad," says Zafir. "If it's not good, it can be sent back."

He offers to sell the kilo package. Until the Americans started bombing earlier this month, the going rate was $6,500 (£4,500) a kilo, he says, a quarter of the price it would fetch in London.

Prices are falling. Zafir wants $5,500, with $500 for the commander on the Taliban checkpoint near Kabul. He has to pay on his return or produce the unsold goods. He also has to turn over the remaining $5,000 to his masters in Kabul and Jalalabad; later he receives a fee for his work.

"The partner pays me for what I sell. I can easily get rid of 100 kilos a month. That is half a million dollars worth at Afghan prices."

If cannabis and opium have always been an integral component of Afghan culture, it is the Taliban who brought heroin into Zafir's life and put the opium poppy at the centre of their mass exercise in primitivism, turning the flower into a key instrument in their endeavour to build a rudimentary and austere Islamic society modelled on eighth century principles.

In 1997 Zafir's neighbour in the Kabul bazaar, also a vegetable seller, made him an offer he could not resist. The neighbour, a Pashtun Taliban supporter, had relatives in Jalalabad in the poppy trade.

Local farmers were being allowed to take advantage of the relative peace imposed by the Taliban to boost opium poppy cultivation in the fertile valley running towards Pakistan, south of Jalalabad.

Poppy cultivation

The mud-coloured resin being extracted from the ripe poppies was being processed into heroin at a Jalalabad factory run by the Taliban. The relatives wanted retail outlets and couriers in Kabul.

"They asked me if I wanted to start taking the stuff north. It would be good money. So I agreed. It's a big income for them and little risk. A big risk for me and a little income. The Taliban are not good people. But on their territory I have to work with them," Zafir says. "We need to live in Kabul and you can only work in the bazaar if you have links with the Taliban. Otherwise they can kick me out. But now they trust me."

Zafir's career as a courier coincided with a huge expansion in the Afghan heroin trade which, in turn, coincided with the Taliban's assumption of power.

The heroin trade is controlled and heavily taxed by the Taliban in a country which has few of the attributes of a functioning economy: drugs, guns, farming, and smuggling are about all there is.

For the Taliban, needing to restock their war chest, the poppy is a rich source of zakat , the Islamic tax levied for the poor.

"They take taxes from the growers. They take taxes from the producers. They take taxes from the transporters," says Zafir.

By 1999, Afghanistan, a country acutely unable to feed itself, became the world's biggest producer of opium.

During his address to the Labour party conference last month the prime minis ter, Tony Blair, said: "The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets. That is another part of their regime that we should seek to destroy."

Three years after the Taliban captured Kabul, poppy cultivation and opium production had soared to 4,600 tonnes of opium a year, double the output of pre-Taliban Afghanistan and far outstripping its nearest rival, Burma, said the Vienna-based UN Drugs Control Programme.

Around 1m Afghans in a population of 20m were estimated to be growing poppy, thousands more were engaged in the processing and trafficking of the heroin.

The Taliban, meanwhile, used the social devastation accruing from the heroin trade to try to blackmail the west. If you recognise our regime, we will ban opium production, the Taliban offered.

They were rebuffed. But they banned it anyway. The UNDCP as well as two independent surveys conducted earlier this year concluded that poppy farming and opium production in Taliban Afghanistan was virtually nil last year and that the opposition Northern Alliance, holding only 10% of Afghanistan, was now the main source of Afghan opium. Zafir says the ban was mainly due to the acute drought of the past three years since the best opium is produced from well-irrigated poppyfields and that cultivation and production are being resumed, although the US air strikes have grounded Taliban aircraft used to transport opium and heroin around the country.

Zafir claims that most of the Taliban leadership is involved in the drugs business. "They're building factories, getting rich. It's all about money. Everyone's in it for themselves," he says. "I know it's a sin against humanity. But what can I do? I need the money, too. I just transport the stuff and sell it. I've never used it and I don't want to."

After The Taliban

The defeat of the Taliban would result in a surge in opium production, which has beenvirtually halted in Afghanistan by the Kabul regime over the last year, United Nations officials have warned.

A new UN survey reveals that the Taliban have completed one of the quickest and most successful drug elimination programmes in history.

The area of land given over to growing opium poppies in 2001 fell by 91 per cent compared with the year before, according to the UN Drug Control Programme's (UNDCP) annual survey of Afghanistan. Production of fresh opium, the raw material for heroin, went down by an unprecedented 94 per cent, from 3,276 tonnes to 185 tonnes.

Almost all Afghan opium this year came out of territories controlled by America's ally in the assault on Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance. Because of a ban on poppy farming, only one in 25 of Afghanistan's opium poppies was being grown in Taliban areas.

However, while poppy cultivation dropped, exports of refined opium and heroin from the Taliban-controlled areas remained unchanged because of stockpiles.

Some UN officials privately believe that the Taliban have not received enough credit for controlling drugs, and that under any post-Taliban regime cultivation, consumption – and the amount of opium and heroin on world markets – would inevitably increase.

"These are things which no one can say," said one UN official who worked in Afghanistan before the terrorist attacks of 11 September. "No other government in the world would have been able to do that. When I travelled through Badakshan [a province largely controlled by the Northern Alliance] you often saw the poppies."

In its early years the Taliban justified the cultivation of opium on the basis that it was a drug consumed abroad by unbelievers.

But in 2000, the regime changed its mind and vigorously enforced the ban, apparently in the hope of winning credit with the UN and strengthening its claim to Afghanistan's seat in the General Assembly, currently occupied by the Northern Alliance.

Afghanistan Bans Poppies

The United Nations Drug Control Program says the world's biggest heroin producing country, Afghanistan, has gone out of the drug business.

A UNDCP report to be released next month will say Afghanistan has completely eradicated cultivation of the opium poppy, the plant producing the resin which is refined into heroin.

"We do not grow poppies and we will not grow them. This is a Taliban edict and it must be obeyed," Sheikh Rashimi, leader of the village of Spenghagbarga, told the CBC's Patrick Brown.

Spenghagbarga is just a dusty truck stop of a village. It used to be a way station on the long journey from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the heroin dealers on the streets of Moscow, London, New York and Vancouver.

The Taliban's ban on opium products has cost many people their livelihoods. But no one dares defy the ban.

Last year Afghanistan produced almost 4,000 tonnes of opium. This year's figure is zero.

Bernard Frahi of the UN Drug Control Program confirms those numbers. But now, he says, Afghanistan's farmers need help.

"Since they did something that is remarkable, and deserve respect by the international community, they deserve our respect and support to help their families," he said.

Last year Mohammed Nasir had a flourishing and valuable crop of opium poppies. This year his crop is mostly weeds. His income from the wheat and cotton he can grow will be a fraction of what he made growing opium poppies.

"If we had help with irrigation," he says, "seeds, fertilizer, it would be easier to make up the difference."

Canada's ambassador to Pakistan, Ferry De Kerckhove, says Canada is among countries seeking ways to help. But, without helping the oppressive Taliban regime.

"We are not rewarding the Taliban, what we are trying to do it help labourers and farmers and I am perfectly at ease with that," said De Kerckhove.

It seems clear that the West has been taken by complete surprise by this total eradication of the opium poppies in Afghanistan. The test will be to see if the West can now provide aid before hardship forces Afghanistan's farmers to risk growing poppies again.

Opium and the Taliban

JALALABAD, Afghanistan

U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.

"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies.

A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated.

Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium -- the milky substance drained from the poppy plant -- is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 1999 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

The U.N. surveyors, who completed their search this week, crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan last year, Frahi said in an interview Wednesday. They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had been awash in poppies.

This year they found poppies growing on barely an acre here and there, Frahi said. The rest -- about 175,000 acres -- was clean.

"We have to look at the situation with careful optimism," said Sandro Tucci of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, Austria.

He said indications are that no poppies were planted this season and that, as a result, there hasn't been any production of opium -- but that officials would keep checking.

The State Department counternarcotics official said the department would make its own estimate of the poppy crop. Information received so far suggests there will be a decrease, but how much is not yet clear, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We do not think by any stretch of the imagination that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been eliminated. But we, like the rest of the world, welcome positive news."

The Drug Enforcement Administration declined to comment.

No U.S. government official can enter Afghanistan because of security concerns stemming from the presence of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Poppies are harvested in March and April, which is why the survey was done now. Tucci said it would have been impossible for the poppies to have been harvested already.

The areas searched by the U.N. surveyors are the most fertile lands under Taliban control. Other areas, though they are somewhat fertile, have not traditionally been poppy growing areas and farmers are struggling to raise any crops at all because of severe drought. The rest of the land held by the Taliban is mountainous or desert, where poppies could not grow.

Karim Rahimi, the U.N. drug control liaison in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, said farmers were growing wheat or onions in fields where they once grew poppies.

"It is amazing, really, when you see the fields that last year were filled with poppies and this year there is wheat," he said.

The Taliban enforced the ban by threatening to arrest village elders and mullahs who allowed poppies to be grown. Taliban soldiers patrolled in trucks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. About 1,000 people in Nangarhar who tried to defy the ban were arrested and jailed until they agreed to destroy their crops.

Signs throughout Nangarhar warn against drug production and use, some calling it an "illicit phenomenon." Another reads: "Be drug free, be happy."

Last year, poppies grew on 12,600 acres of land in Nangarhar province. According to the U.N. survey, poppies were planted on only 17 acres there this season and all were destroyed by the Taliban.

"The Taliban have done their work very seriously," Frahi said.

But the ban has badly hurt farmers in one of the world's poorest countries, shattered by two decades of war and devastated by drought.

Ahmed Rehman, who shares less than three acres in Nangarhar with his three brothers, said the opium he produced last year on part of the land brought him $1,100.

This year, he says, he will be lucky to get $300 for the onions and cattle feed he planted on the entire parcel.

"Life is very bad for me this year," he said. "Last year I was able to buy meat and wheat and now this year there is nothing."

But Rehman said he never considered defying the ban.

"The Taliban were patrolling all the time. Of course I was afraid. I did not want to go to jail and lose my freedom and my dignity," he said, gesturing with dirt-caked hands.

Shams-ul-Haq Sayed, an officer of the Taliban drug control office in Jalalabad, said farmers need international aid.

"This year was the most important for us because growing poppies was part of their culture, and the first years are always the most difficult," he said.

Tucci said discussions are under way on how to help the farmers.

Western diplomats in Pakistan have suggested the Taliban is simply trying to drive up the price of opium they have stockpiled. The State Department official also said Afghanistan could do more by destroying drug stockpiles and heroin labs and arresting producers and traffickers.

Frahi dismissed that as "nonsense" and said it is drug traffickers and shopkeepers who have stockpiles. Two pounds of opium worth $35 last year are now worth as much as $360, he said.

Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani, the Taliban's top drug official in Nangarhar, said the ban would remain regardless of whether the Taliban received aid or international recognition.

"It is our decree that there will be no poppy cultivation. It is banned forever in this country," he said. "Whether we get assistance or not, poppy growing will never be allowed again in our country.

History Of Opium

• c.3400 B.C.
  The opium poppy is cultivated in lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians refer to it as Hul Gil, the 'joy plant.' The Sumerians would soon pass along the plant and its euphoric effects to the Assyrians. The art of opium poppy-culling would continue from the Assyrians to the Babylonians who in turn would pass their knowledge onto the Egyptians.

• c.1300 B.C.
  In the capital city of Thebes, Egyptians begin cultivation of opium thebaicum, grown in their famous poppy fields. The opium trade flourishes during the reign of Thutmose IV, Akhenaton and King Tutankhamen. The trade route included the Phoenicians and Minoans who move the profitable item across the Mediterranean Sea into Greece, Carthage, and Europe.

• c.1100 B.C.
  On the island of Cyprus, the "Peoples of the Sea" craft surgical-quality culling knives to harvest opium, which they would cultivate, trade and smoke before the fall of Troy.

• c. 460 B.C.
  Hippocrates, "the father of medicine", dismisses the magical attributes of opium but acknowledges its usefulness as a narcotic and styptic in treating internal diseases, diseases of women and epidemics.

• 330 B.C.
  Alexander the Great introduces opium to the people of Persia and India.

• A.D. 400
  Opium thebaicum, from the Egyptian fields at Thebes, is first introduced to China by Arab traders.

• 1020
  Avicenna of Persia teaches that opium is "the most powerful of stupefacients."

• A.D. 1200
  Ancient Indian medical treatises The Shodal Gadanigrah and Sharangdhar Samahita describe the use of opium for diarrohea and sexual debility. The Dhanvantri Nighantu also describes the medical properties of opium.

• 1300s
  Opium disappears for two hundred years from European historical record. Opium had become a taboo subject for those in circles of learning during the Holy Inquisition. In the eyes of the Inquisition, anything from the East was linked to the Devil.

• 1500
  The Portuguese, while trading along the East China Sea, initiate the smoking of opium. The effects were instantaneous as they discovered but it was a practice the Chinese considered barbaric and subversive.

• 1527
  During the height of the Reformation, opium is reintroduced into European medical literature by Paracelsus as laudanum. These black pills or "Stones of Immortality" were made of opium thebaicum, citrus juice and quintessence of gold and prescribed as painkillers.

• 1600s
  Residents of Persia and India begin eating and drinking opium mixtures for recreational use. Portuguese merchants carrying cargoes of Indian opium through Macao direct its trade flow into China.

• 1601
  Ships chartered by Elizabeth I are instructed to purchase the finest Indian opium and transport it back to England.

• 1620s -1670s
  Rajput troops fighting for the Mughals introduce the habit of taking opium to Assam. Opium is given daily to Rajput soldiers. From 1637 onwards Opium becomes the main commodity of British trade with China.

• 1680
  English apothecary, Thomas Sydenham, introduces Sydenham's Laudanum, a compound of opium, sherry wine and herbs. His pills along with others of the time become popular remedies for numerous ailments.

• 1700
  The Dutch export shipments of Indian opium to China and the islands of Southeast Asia; the Dutch introduce the practice of smoking opium in a tobacco pipe to the Chinese.

• 1729
  Chinese emperor, Yung Cheng, issues an edict prohibiting the smoking of opium and its domestic sale, except under license for use as medicine.

• 1750
  The British East India Company assumes control of Bengal and Bihar, opium-growing districts of India. British shipping dominates the opium trade out of Calcutta to China.

• 1753
  Linnaeus, the father of botany, first classifies the poppy, Papaver somniferum - 'sleep-inducing', in his book Genera Plantarum.

• 1767
  The British East India Company's import of opium to China reaches a staggering two thousand chests of opium per year.

• 1773
  East India Company assumes monopoly over all the opium produced in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Warren Hastings introduces system of contracts. Contracts for dealing in opium were awarded through auction.

• 1793
  The British East India Company establishes a monopoly on the opium trade. All poppy growers in India were forbidden to sell opium to competitor trading companies.

• 1796
  The import of opium into China becomes a contraband trade. Silver was smuggled out to pay for smuggling opium in.

• 1797
  East India Company introduced Bengal Regulation IV to enable appointment of Opium Agents for purchase of opium from cultivators and its processing at factories owned by the company at Patna and Ghazipur

• 1799
  China's emperor, Kia King, bans opium completely, making trade and poppy cultivation illegal.

• 1800
  The British Levant Company purchases nearly half of all of the opium coming out of Smyrna, Turkey strictly for importation to Europe and the United States.

• 1803
  Friedrich Sertürner of Paderborn, Germany discovers the active ingredient of opium by dissolving it in acid then neutralizing it with ammonia. The result: alkaloids - Principium somniferum or morphine.

  Physicians believe that opium had finally been perfected and tamed. Morphine is lauded as "God's own medicine" for its reliability, long-lasting effects and safety.

• 1805
  A smuggler from Boston, Massachusetts, Charles Cabot, attempts to purchase opium from the British, then smuggle it into China under the auspices of British smugglers.

• 1812
  American John Cushing, under the employ of his uncles' business, James and Thomas H. Perkins Company of Boston, acquires his wealth from smuggling Turkish opium to Canton.

• 1816
  John Jacob Astor of New York City joins the opium smuggling trade. His American Fur Company purchases ten tons of Turkish opium then ships the contraband item to Canton on the Macedonian. Astor would later leave the China opium trade and sell solely to England.

• 1819
  Writer John Keats and other English literary personalities experiment with opium intended for strict recreational use - simply for the high and taken at extended, non-addictive intervals

• 1821
  Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical account of opium addiction, Confessions of an English Opium-eater.

• 1827
  E. Merck & Company of Darmstadt, Germany, begins commercial manufacturing of morphine.

• 1830
  The British dependence on opium for medicinal and recreational use reaches an all time high as 22,000 pounds of opium is imported from Turkey and India.

  Jardine-Matheson & Company of London inherit India and its opium from the British East India Company once the mandate to rule and dictate the trade policies of British India are no longer in effect.

• 1837
  Elizabeth Barrett Browning falls under the spell of morphine. This, however, does not impede her ability to write "poetical paragraphs."

• March 18, 1839
  Lin Tse-Hsu, imperial Chinese commissioner in charge of suppressing the opium traffic, orders all foreign traders to surrender their opium. In response, the British send expeditionary warships to the coast of China, beginning The First Opium War.

• 1840
  New Englanders bring 24,000 pounds of opium into the United States. This catches the attention of U.S. Customs which promptly puts a duty fee on the import.

• 1841
  The Chinese are defeated by the British in the First Opium War. Along with paying a large indemnity, Hong Kong is ceded to the British.

• 1842
  The Treaty of Nanking between the Queen of Great Britain and the Emperor of China.

• 1843
  Dr. Alexander Wood of Edinburgh discovers a new technique of administering morphine, injection with a syringe. He finds the effects of morphine on his patients instantaneous and three times more potent.

• 1852
  The British arrive in lower Burma, importing large quantities of opium from India and selling it through a government-controlled opium monopoly.

• 1856
  The British and French renew their hostilities against China in the Second Opium War. In the aftermath of the struggle, China is forced to pay another indemnity. The importation of opium is legalized.

  Opium production increases along the highlands of Southeast Asia.

• 1874
  English researcher, C.R. Wright first synthesizes heroin, or diacetylmorphine, by boiling morphine over a stove.

  In San Francisco, smoking opium in the city limits is banned and is confined to neighboring Chinatowns and their opium dens.

• 1878
  Britain passes the Opium Act with hopes of reducing opium consumption. Under the new regulation, the selling of opium is restricted to registered Chinese opium smokers and Indian opium eaters while the Burmese are strictly prohibited from smoking opium.

• 1886
  The British acquire Burma's northeast region, the Shan state. Production and smuggling of opium along the lower region of Burma thrives despite British efforts to maintain a strict monopoly on the opium trade.

• 1890
  U.S. Congress, in its earliest law-enforcement legislation on narcotics, imposes a tax on opium and morphine.

  Tabloids owned by William Randolph Hearst publish stories of white women being seduced by Chinese men and their opium to invoke fear of the 'Yellow Peril', disguised as an "anti-drug" campaign.

• 1895
  Heinrich Dreser working for The Bayer Company of Elberfeld, Germany, finds that diluting morphine with acetyls produces a drug without the common morphine side effects. Bayer begins production of diacetylmorphine and coins the name "heroin." Heroin would not be introduced commercially for another three years.

• Early 1900s
  The philanthropic Saint James Society in the U.S. mounts a campaign to supply free samples of heroin through the mail to morphine addicts who are trying give up their habits. Efforts by the British and French to control opium production in Southeast Asia are successful. Nevertheless, this Southeast region, referred to as the 'Golden Triangle', eventually becomes a major player in the profitable opium trade during the 1940s.

• 1902
  In various medical journals, physicians discuss the side effects of using heroin as a morphine step-down cure. Several physicians would argue that their patients suffered from heroin withdrawal symptoms equal to morphine addiction.

• 1903
  Heroin addiction rises to alarming rates.

• 1905
  U.S. Congress bans opium.

• 1906
  China and England finally enact a treaty restricting the Sino-Indian opium trade. Several physicians experiment with treatments for heroin addiction. Dr. Alexander Lambert and Charles B. Towns tout their popular cure as the most "advanced, effective and compassionate cure" for heroin addiction. The cure consisted of a 7 day regimen, which included a five day purge of heroin from the addict's system with doses of belladonna delirium.

  U.S. Congress passes the Pure Food and Drug Act requiring contents labeling on patent medicines by pharmaceutical companies. As a result, the availability of opiates and opiate consumers significantly declines.

• 1909
  The first federal drug prohibition passes in the U.S. outlawing the importation of opium. It was passed in preparation for the Shanghai Conference, at which the US presses for legislation aimed at suppressing the sale of opium to China.

• February 1, 1909
  The International Opium Commission convenes in Shanghai. Heading the U.S. delegation are Dr. Hamilton Wright and Episcopal Bishop Henry Brent. Both would try to convince the international delegation of the immoral and evil effects of opium.

• 1910
  After 150 years of failed attempts to rid the country of opium, the Chinese are finally successful in convincing the British to dismantle the India-China opium trade.

• Dec. 17, 1914
  The passage of Harrison Narcotics Act which aims to curb drug (especially cocaine but also heroin) abuse and addiction. It requires doctors, pharmacists and others who prescribed narcotics to register and pay a tax.

• 1923
  The U.S. Treasury Department's Narcotics Division (the first federal drug agency) bans all legal narcotics sales. With the prohibition of legal venues to purchase heroin, addicts are forced to buy from illegal street dealers.

• 1925
  In the wake of the first federal ban on opium, a thriving black market opens up in New York's Chinatown.

• 1930s
  The majority of illegal heroin smuggled into the U.S. comes from China and is refined in Shanghai and Tietsin.

• Early 1940s
  During World War II, opium trade routes are blocked and the flow of opium from India and Persia is cut off. Fearful of losing their opium monopoly, the French encourage Hmong farmers to expand their opium production.

• 1945-1947
  Burma gains its independence from Britain at the end of World War II. Opium cultivation and trade flourishes in the Shan states.

• 1948-1972
  Corsican gangsters dominate the U.S. heroin market through their connection with Mafia drug distributors. After refining the raw Turkish opium in Marseilles laboratories, the heroin is made easily available for purchase by junkies on New York City streets.

• 1950s
  U.S. efforts to contain the spread of Communism in Asia involves forging alliances with tribes and warlords inhabiting the areas of the Golden Triangle, (an expanse covering Laos, Thailand and Burma), thus providing accessibility and protection along the southeast border of China. In order to maintain their relationship with the warlords while continuing to fund the struggle against communism, the U.S. and France supply the drug warlords and their armies with ammunition, arms and air transport for the production and sale of opium. The result: an explosion in the availability and illegal flow of heroin into the United States and into the hands of drug dealers and addicts.

• 1962
  Burma outlaws opium.

• 1965-1970
  U.S. involvement in Vietnam is blamed for the surge in illegal heroin being smuggled into the States. To aid U.S. allies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sets up a charter airline, Air America, to transport raw opium from Burma and Laos. As well, some of the opium would be transported to Marseilles by Corsican gangsters to be refined into heroin and shipped to the U.S via the French connection. The number of heroin addicts in the U.S. reaches an estimated 750,000.

• October 1970
  Legendary singer, Janis Joplin, is found dead at Hollywood's Landmark Hotel, a victim of an "accidental heroin overdose."

• 1972
  Heroin exportation from Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle, controlled by Shan warlord, Khun Sa, becomes a major source for raw opium in the profitable drug trade.

  Solomon Snyder and Candace Pert discover opiate receptor in the brain.

• July 1, 1973
  President Nixon creates the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) under the Justice Dept. to consolidate virtually all federal powers of drug enforcement in a single agency.

• Mid-1970s
  Saigon falls. The heroin epidemic subsides. The search for a new source of raw opium yields Mexico's Sierra Madre. "Mexican Mud" would temporarily replace "China White" heroin until 1978.

• 1975
  Hans Kosterlitz and his colleagues isolate and purify an endogenous opioid in the brain, enkephalin.

• 1978
  The U.S. and Mexican governments find a means to eliminate the source of raw opium - by spraying poppy fields with Agent Orange. The eradication plan is termed a success as the amount of "Mexican Mud" in the U.S. drug market declines. In response to the decrease in availability of "Mexican Mud", another source of heroin is found in the Golden Crescent area - Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, creating a dramatic upsurge in the production and trade of illegal heroin.

• 1982
  Comedian John Belushi of Animal House fame, dies of a heroin-cocaine - "speedball" overdose.

• Sept. 13, 1984
  U.S. State Department officials conclude, after more than a decade of crop substitution programs for Third World growers of marijuana, coca or opium poppies, that the tactic cannot work without eradication of the plants and criminal enforcement. Poor results are reported from eradication programs in Burma, Pakistan, Mexico and Peru.

• 1988
  Opium production in Burma increases under the rule of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), the Burmese junta regime.

  The single largest heroin seizure is made in Bangkok. The U.S. suspects that the 2,400-pound shipment of heroin, en route to New York City, originated from the Golden Triangle region, controlled by drug warlord, Khun Sa.

• 1990
  A U.S. Court indicts Khun Sa, leader of the Shan United Army and reputed drug warlord, on heroin trafficking charges. The U.S. Attorney General's office charges Khun Sa with importing 3,500 pounds of heroin into New York City over the course of eighteen months, as well as holding him responsible for the source of the heroin seized in Bangkok.

• 1992
  Colombia's drug lords are said to be introducing a high-grade form of heroin into the United States.

• 1993
  The Thai army with support from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) launches its operation to destroy thousands of acres of opium poppies from the fields of the Golden Triangle region.

• January 1994
  Efforts to eradicate opium at its source remains unsuccessful. The Clinton Administration orders a shift in policy away from the anti- drug campaigns of previous administrations. Instead the focus includes "institution building" with the hope that by "strengthening democratic governments abroad, [it] will foster law-abiding behavior and promote legitimate economic opportunity."

• 1995
  The Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia is now the leader in opium production, yielding 2,500 tons annually. According to U.S. drug experts, there are new drug trafficking routes from Burma through Laos, to southern China, Cambodia and Vietnam.

• January 1996
  Khun Sa, one of Shan state's most powerful drug warlords, "surrenders" to SLORC. The U.S. is suspicious and fears that this agreement between the ruling junta regime and Khun Sa includes a deal allowing "the opium king" to retain control of his opium trade but in exchange end his 30-year-old revolutionary war against the government.

• November 1996
  International drug trafficking organizations, including China, Nigeria, Colombia and Mexico are said to be "aggressively marketing heroin in the United States and Europe."
• 1999
  Bumper opium crop of 4,600 tons in Afghanistan. UN Drug Control Program estimates around 75% of world's heroin production is of Afghan origin.

• 2000
  Taliban leader Mullah Omar bans poppy cultivation in Afghanistan; United Nations Drug Control Program confirms opium production eradicated.

• July 2001
  Portugal decriminalizes all drugs for personal consumption.

• Autumn 2001
  War in Afghanistan; heroin floods the Pakistan market. Taleban regime overthrown.

• October 2002
  U.N. Drug Control and Crime Prevention Agency announces Afghanistan has regained its position as the world's largest opium producer.

• December 2002
  UK Government health plan will make heroin available free on National Health Service "to all those with a clinical need for it". Consumers are sceptical.

• April 2003
  State sponsored heroin trafficking: Korea's attempt to penetrate the Australian heroin market hits rocky waters.

• October 2003
  US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) launch special task force to curb surge in Net-based sales of narcotics from online pharmacies.

• January 2004
  Consumer groups file a lawsuit against Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma. The company is alleged to have used fraudulent patents and deceptive trade practices to block the prescription of cheap generic medications for patients in pain.

• September 2004
  Singapore announces plans to execute a self-medicating heroin user, Chew Seow Leng. Under Singapore law, chronic heroin users with a high physiological tolerance to the drug are deemed to be "traffickers". Consumers face a mandatory death sentence if they take more than 15 grams (0.5 ounces) of heroin a day.

• September 2004
  A Tasmanian company publishes details of its genetically-engineered opium poppies. Top1 [thebaine oripavine poppy 1] mutants do not produce morphine or codeine. Tasmania is the source of some 40% of the world's legal opiates; its native crop of poppies is already being re-engineered with the mutant stain. Conversely, some investigators expect that the development of genetically-engineered plants and microorganisms to manufacture potent psychoactive compounds will become widespread later in the 21st century. Research into transgenic psychotropic botanicals and microbes is controversial; genes from mutants have a habit of spreading into the wild population by accident as well as design.

• September 2004
  The FDA grants a product license to Purdue's pain medication Palladone: high dose, extended-release hydromorphone capsules. Palladone is designed to provide "around-the-clock" pain-relief for opioid-tolerant users.

• October 2004
  Unannounced withdrawal of newly-issued DEA guidelines to pain specialists. The guidelines had pledged that physicians wouldn't be arrested for providing adequate pain-relief to their patients. DEA drug-diversion chief Patricia Good earlier stated that the new rules were meant to eliminate an "aura of fear" that stopped doctors treating pain aggressively.

• December 2004
  McLean pain-treatment specialist Dr William E. Hurwitz is sent to prison for allegedly "excessive" prescription of opioid painkillers to chronic pain patients. Testifying in court, Dr Hurwitz describes the abrupt stoppage of prescriptions as "tantamount to torture".

• May 2005
  Researchers at Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center in Emeryville, California, inhibit expression of the AGS3 gene in the core of nucleus accumbens. Experimentally blocking the AGS3 gene curbs the desire for heroin in addicted rodents. By contrast, activation of the reward centres of the nucleus accumbens is immensely pleasurable and addictive. The possible effects of overexpression and gene amplification of AGS3 remain unexplored.

• December 2005
  Neuroscientists close in on the (hypothetical) final common pathway of pleasure in the brain. The "hedonic hotspot" is activated by agonists of the mu opioid receptor. In rats, at least, the hedonic hotspot is located in a single cubic millimeter of tissue: the substrates of pure bliss may lie in medium spiny neurons in the rostrodorsal region of the medial shell of the nucleus accumbens.

• May 2006
  In Mexico, Congress passes a bill legalising the private personal use of all drugs, including opium and all opiate-based drugs. President Vicente Fox promises to to sign the measure, but buckles a day later under US government pressure. The bill is referred back to Congress for changes. "We welcome the idea of Mexico reviewing the legislation to avoid the perception that drug use would be tolerated in Mexico," says the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

• June 2006
  University of Southern California neuroscientist Irving Biederman publishes in the American Scientist a theory of knowledge-acquisition likening all human beings to "junkies". On this hypothesis, knowledge junkies are driven to learn more information by a craving for the brain's own natural opium-like substances.

• September 2006
  The head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that Afghanistan's harvest in 2006 will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium - a world record. This figure amounts to some 92% of global opium supply.

• November 2006
  Senior UK police officer Howard Roberts advocates legalisation of heroin and its availability without charge on National Health Service (NHS) prescription.

• August 2007
  Afghanistan's poppy production rises an estimated 15 percent over 2006. Afghanistan now accounts for 95 percent of the world's opium poppy crop, a 3 percentage point increase over last year. The US State Department's top counternarcotics official Tom Schweich claims that Afghanistan is now "providing close to 95 percent of the world's heroin".

• October 2007
  Death of Golden Triangle opium lord and former Shan separatist leader Khun Sa (1933-2007). At its peak, Khun Sa's narcotics empire controlled production of an estimated quarter of the world's heroin supply.

• March 2008
  A report by The Pew Centre, a Washington think tank, reveals that over one in 100 adults in the USA is now in jail: some 2,300,000 prisoners, triple the rate in the 1980s. American prisons now hold around a quarter of the world's inmates. Nearly half of US federal prisoners are imprisoned for non-violent, drug-related "crimes". Law professor Paul Cassell of the University of Utah comments on the size of the US prison population: "it's the price of living in the most free society in the world.”

• November 2008
  Swiss voters overwhelmingly endorse a permanent and comprehensive legalized heroin program.

• February 2009
  FDA announces plans further to restrict access to opioid-based pain-relievers by American citizens and their doctors.

• March 2009
  According to the World Health Organization, around 80% of the world’s population does not have adequate access to pain relief. The international organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) blames a failure of leadership, inadequate training of health care workers, and “over-zealous drug control efforts”.

The Plant Of Joy 2

Fellow English author Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) writes of "the marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or for pain". De Quincey seems to have treated opium as a mood-brightening smart-drug. The author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) draws invidious comparisons with alcohol. He attributes a heightening of his mental powers to opium use...

"Whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation and harmony. Wine robs a man of self-possession; opium greatly invigorates it....Wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance; and, beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatilize and disperse the intellectual energies; whereas opium seems to compose what has been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. ...A man who is inebriated...is often...brutal; but the opium eater...feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity; and over all is the great light of majestic intellect...."

De Quincey states that not he himself, but opium, should be regarded as the true hero of his essay. Opium was his "Divine Poppy-juice, as indispensable as breathing". By reputation, opium users have dull wits, idle lives and diminished sensibility. This was not de Quincey's verdict. He made a habit of going to the opera under its influence - and found his experience of music delightfully enhanced...

"Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure...It is sufficient to say, that a chorus, etc of elaborate harmony displayed before me, as in a piece of arras work, the whole of my past life - not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music; no longer painful to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents removed...and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed..."

Opium induces gentle, subtle, dream-like hallucinations very different from the fierce and unpredictable weirdness of LSD. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) likens opium to a woman friend, "...an old and terrible friend, and, alas! like them all, full of caresses and deceptions." Across the Atlantic, in 1842, William Blair describes his experiences with opium in a New York magazine...

"While I was sitting at tea, I felt a strange sensation, totally unlike any thing I had ever felt before; a gradual creeping thrill, which in a few minutes occupied every part of my body, lulling to sleep the before-mentioned racking pain, producing a pleasing glow from head to foot, and inducing a sensation of dreamy exhilaration (if the phrase be intelligible to others as it is to me) similar in nature but not in degree to the drowsiness caused by wine, though not inclining me to sleep; in fact far from it, that I longed to engage in some active exercise; to sing, dance, or leap...so vividly did I feel my vitality - for in this state of delicious exhilaration even mere excitement seemed absolute elysium - that I could not resist the tendency to break out in the strangest vagaries, until my companions thought me deranged...After I had been seated [at the play I was attending] a few minutes, the nature of the excitement changed, and a 'waking sleep' succeeded. The actors on the stage vanished; the stage itself lost its reality; and before my entranced sight magnificent halls stretched out in endless succession with galley above gallery, while the roof was blazing with gems, like stars whose rays alone illumined the whole building, which was tinged with strange, gigantic figures, like the wild possessors of lost globe...I will not attempt farther to describe the magnificent vision which a little pill of 'brown gum' had conjured up from the realm of ideal being. No words that I can command would do justice to its Titanian splendour and immensity..."

Opium was also well known in Chinese antiquity. One 10th century poem celebrates how the opium poppy can be made into a drink "fit for Buddha". Ancient peoples either ate parts of the flower or converted them into liquids to drink. But by the 7th century, the Turkish and Islamic cultures of western Asia had discovered that the most powerful medicinal effects could be obtained by igniting and smoking the poppy's congealed juices; and the habit spread. The widespread use of opium in China dates to tobacco-smoking in pipes introduced by the Dutch from Java via the island of Formosa in the 17th century. Whereas Indians ordinarily ate opium, the Chinese smoked it. The Chinese mixed Indian opium with tobacco, two products traded by the Dutch. Pipe-smoking was adopted throughout the region. Predictably enough, this resulted in increased opium-smoking, both with and without tobacco. Old encrusted opium-pipes were still valuable because they contained a residue of charcoal and raw opium known as "dross". Dross could be recycled with tobacco plus various adulterants and sold to the poor. Styles of opium pipe reflected the relative wealth or poverty of their owners. Pipes ranged from bejewelled, elaborately ornamented works of art to simple constructions of clay or bamboo.

By the late-1700s, the British East India Company controlled the prime Indian poppy-growing areas on the Ganges plain between Patna and Benares. The company dominated the Asian opium trade; but they did not create it. "Take your opium" was a standard greeting in some Indian cities even before the Europeans arrived. By 1800, however, the British East India Company had a virtual monopoly, controlling supply and setting prices. Dealers, merchants and users alike lovingly assessed the quality and potency of their merchandise with the ardour of a wine connoisseur. According to The Chinese Repository, discerning purchasers of the raw product looked for opium of...

"...moderately firm texture, capable of receiving an impression from the finger; of a dark yellow color when held in the light, but nearly black in the mass, with a strong smell, and free from grittiness..."

Opium was already heavily used in China as a recreational drug. The Imperial Chinese court had banned its use and importation, but large quantities were still being smuggled into the country. In 1839, the Qing Emperor, Tao Kwang, ordered his minister Lin Tse-hsü to take action. Lin petitioned Queen Victoria for help; but he was ignored. In reaction, the Emperor instructed the confiscation of 20,000 barrels of opium and detained some foreign traders. The British retaliated by attacking the port-city of Canton.

Thus began the First Opium War, launched by the biggest, richest and perhaps most aggressive drug cartel the world has ever known, the British Empire. The Chinese were defeated. They were forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. The British required that the opium trade be allowed to continue; that the Chinese pay a large settlement and open five new ports to foreign trade; and that China cede Hong Kong to Britain.

Peace didn't last. The Second Opium War began and ended in 1856 over western demands that opium markets be expanded. The Chinese were again defeated. In 1858, by the Treaty of Tientsin, opium importation to China was formally legalised. God-fearing British traders claimed that the hard-working Chinese were entitled to "a harmless luxury"; the opium trade in less respectable hands would be taken over by "desperadoes, pirates and marauders". Soon opium poured into China in unprecedented quantities. By the end of the nineteenth century, it has been estimated that over a quarter of the adult male Chinese population were addicted.

In 1893, a Royal Commission on Opium was established to investigate the use of opium in the British Indian Empire. Many Protestants had begun to demonise opium; and Britain's Liberal Party hoped to see the drug banned for non-medical use. The Commission held seventy days of public hearings and called hundreds of witnesses. Its final Report ran to seven volumes totalling some 2500 pages. The Commission concluded that the use of opium in India was not a cause of "extensive moral or physical degradation." Opium was no worse than alcohol. The medical and non-medical use of opium were impossible to distinguish in practice. An effective ban would be infeasible. The Report was welcomed by an editorial published in the British medical journal The Lancet in April 1895. The Report's findings "dealt a crushing blow to the anti-opium faddists". Prohibitionist claims were "...either ridiculously exaggerated or even altogether unfounded."

In North America, the initial history of Papaver somniferum was somewhat more peaceful than in Asia. During the first few centuries of European settlement, opium poppies were widely cultivated. Early settlers dissolved the resin in whisky to relieve coughs, aches and pains.

The plant had further uses. Papaver somniferum produces lots of small black seeds. Poppy-seeds are an ingredient of typical bird-seed and a common garnish on rolls. Poppy-seeds can also be ground into flour; used in salad-dressings; added to sauces as flavouring or thickening-agents; and the oil can be expressed and used in cooking. Poppy-heads are infused to make a traditional sedative drink.

Many distinguished early Americans grew Papaver somniferum. Rightly or wrongly, they would today be treated as felons. Thomas Jefferson cultivated opium poppies at his garden in Monticello. The seeds from its plants, including the poppies, were sold at the gift-shop of Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants until 1991 - when a drug-bust at the nearby University of Virginia panicked the Board of Directors into ripping up the plants and burning the seeds. The cultivation of Papaver somniferum is banned in the USA under the Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942. Amateur horticulturists, however, continue to value the beautiful red, yellow and white flowers as an adornment to their gardens.

Until the nineteenth century, the only opioids used medicinally or recreationally took the form of crude opium. Opium is a complex chemical cocktail containing sugars, proteins, fats, water, meconic acid, plant wax, latex, gums, ammonia, sulphuric and lactic acids, and numerous alkaloids, most notably morphine (10%-15%), codeine (1%-3%), noscapine (4%-8%), papaverine (1%-3%), and thebaine (1%-2%). All of the latter, apart from thebaine, are used medicinally as analgesics. The opioid analgesics are of inestimable value because they reduce or abolish pain without causing a loss of consciousness. They also relieve coughs, spasms, fevers and diarrhea.

Even thebaine, though without analgesic effect, is of immense pharmaceutical worth. This is because it can be used to produce semi-synthetic opioid morphine analogues such as oxycodone (Percodan), dihydromorphenone (Dilaudid), hydrocodone (Vicodin) and etorphine (Immobilon). Classes of morphine analogue include the diphenylpropylamines (e.g. methadone), the 4-phenylpiperidines (e.g. meperidine), the morphinans (e.g. levorphanol) and 6,7-benzomorphans (e.g. metazocine). Although seemingly structurally diverse, all these compounds either possess a piperidine ring or contain the critical part of its ring structure. Etorphine, for instance, is a very potent analogue of morphine. On one occasion a team of researchers, working in the 1960s under Professor Bentley of Macfarlan Smith and Co, drank mid-morning tea that had been stirred with a contaminated rod. They were soon laid out. The scientists had unwittingly drunk a drug later developed as etorphine. Etorphine is over 1000 times more powerful than morphine; it is used in dart-guns as Immobilon to subdue elephants and rhinos. Fortunately the scientists recovered.

Morphine was first isolated from opium in 1805 by a German pharmacist, Wilhelm Sertürner (1783-1841). Sertürner described it as the Principium Somniferum. He named it morphium - after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Today morphine is isolated from opium in substantially larger quantities - over 1000 tons per year - although most commercial opium is converted into codeine by methylation. On the illicit market, opium gum is filtered into morphine base and then synthesized into heroin.

Doctors had long hunted for effective ways to administer drugs without ingesting them. Taken orally, opium is liable to cause unpleasant gastric side-effects. The development of the hypodermic syringe in the mid-nineteenth century allowed the injection of pure morphine. Both in Europe and America, members of high society and middle-class professionals alike would jack up daily; poor folk couldn't afford to inject drugs. Morphinism became rampant in the USA after its extensive use by injured soldiers on both sides of the Civil War. In late nineteenth-century America, opiates were cheap, legal and abundant. In the judgement of one historian, America became "a dope fiend's paradise". Moreover it was believed that injecting morphine wasn't addictive. Quitting habitual opium use can cause malaise, flu-like symptoms, and depression; morphine seemed an excellent cure. In China, for instance, early twentieth century missionaries handed out anti-opium remedies in such profusion that the pills became known as "Jesus Opium"; their active ingredient was morphine.

Soldiers, missionaries and patent-medicine salesmen were not alone in eulogising its properties. A leading American medical textbook (1868) revealed that opiates...

"...cause a feeling of delicious ease and comfort, with an elevation of the whole moral and intellectual nature...There is not the same uncontrollable excitement as from alcohol, but an exaltation of our better mental qualities, a warmer glow of benevolence, a disposition to do great things, but nobly and beneficently, a higher devotional spirit, and withal a stronger self-reliance, and consciousness of power. Nor is this consciousness altogether mistaken. For the intellectual and imaginative faculties are raised to the highest point compatible with individual capacity...Opium seems to make the individual, for a time, a better and greater man...."

Early optimism about morphine's non-addictive nature proved sadly misplaced. Women in particular came to be seen as especially vulnerable to opiate dependence. The most likely candidate for addiction, according to American doctor R Batholow, was...

"...a delicate female, having light blue eyes and flaxen hair, [who] possesses, according to my observations, the maximum susceptibility..."

Racist stereotypes, rampant xenophobia and lurid images of white slave-traders abounded too. In the 1850s and 1860s, tens of thousands of Chinese had emigrated to the USA to help build the western railroads and work the California mines. Opium-smoking was an integral part of Chinese culture; and its effects offered a merciful relief from dirty and backbreaking work. But the medical tide was turning. Dr Hamilton Wright, newly appointed US opium commissioner, blamed "the Chinese vice" for corrupting the nation's youth....

"One of the most unfortunate phases of the habit of smoking opium in this country [was] the large number of women who have become involved and were living as common-law wives or cohabiting with Chinese in the Chinatowns of our various cities..."

Meanwhile Dr John Witherspoon, later President of the American Medical Association, exhorted the medical community to...

"...save our people from the clutches of this hydra-headed monster which stalks abroad through the civilized world, wrecking lives and happy homes, filling our jails and lunatic asylums, and taking from these unfortunates, the precious promise of eternal life..."

So the search began for a powerful non-addictive alternative to opium and morphine. In 1874, English pharmacist C.R. Alder Wright (1844-1894) had boiled morphine and acetic acid to produce diacetylmorphine, C₁₇H₁₇NO (C₂H₃O₂)₂. Diacetylmorphine was synthesized and marketed commercially by the German pharmaceutical giant, Bayer. In 1898, Bayer launched the best-selling drug-brand of all time, Heroin.

The Plant Of Joy 1

Opium is an extract of the exudate derived from seedpods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. The poppy plant was cultivated in the ancient civilisations of Persia, Egypt and Mesopotamia. Archaeological evidence and fossilised poppy seeds suggest that Neanderthals may have used the opium poppy over thirty thousand years ago. Less controversially, the first known written reference to the poppy appears in a Sumerian text dated around 4,000 BC. The flower was known as hul gil, plant of joy. The Egyptian Eber papyrus of some 3500 years ago advises use of condensed juice of the unripe seed pod "to prevent the excessive crying of children". Papaver somniferum is the only species of Papaver used to produce opium. It is believed to have evolved through centuries of breeding and cultivation from a Mediterranean-growing wild strain, Papaver setigerum.

Homer conveys its effects in The Odyssey. In one episode, Telemachus is depressed after failing to find his father Odysseus. But then Helen...

"...had a happy thought. Into the bowl in which their wine was mixed, she slipped a drug that had the power of robbing grief and anger of their sting and banishing all painful memories. No one who swallowed this dissolved in their wine could shed a single tear that day, even for the death of his mother or father, or if they put his brother or his own son to the sword and he were there to see it done..."

In some parts of the contemporary Middle East, chilled glasses of poppy tea are served to mourners at funerals to ease their grief.

Papaver somniferum has long been popular in Europe. Fossil remains of poppy-seed cake and poppy-pods have been found in Neolithic Swiss lake-dwellings dating from over 4,000 years ago. Poppy images appear in Egyptian pictography and Roman sculpture. Representations of the Greek and Roman gods of sleep, Hypnos and Somnos, show them wearing or carrying poppies. Throughout Egyptian civilisation, priest-physicians promoted the household use of opium preparations. Such remedies were called "thebacium" after the highly potent poppies grown near the capital city of Thebes. Egyptian pharaohs were entombed with opium artefacts by their side. Opium could also readily be bought on the street-markets of Rome. Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180), author of the philosophical classic Meditations, regularly enjoyed opium; it may have contributed to his celebrated stoicism. By the eighth century AD, opium use had spread to Arabia, India and China. The Arabs both used opium and organised its trade. For the Prophet had prohibited the use of alcohol, not hashish or opiates.

Classical Greek physicians either ground the whole plant or used opium extract. Galen lists its medical indications, noting how opium...

"...resists poison and venomous bites, cures chronic headache, vertigo, deafness, epilepsy, apoplexy, dimness of sight, loss of voice, asthma, coughs of all kinds, spitting of blood, tightness of breath, colic, the lilac poison, jaundice, hardness of the spleen stone, urinary complaints, fever, dropsies, leprosies, the trouble to which women are subject, melancholy and all pestilences."

Later authorities were scarcely less enthusiastic. Physicians commonly believed that the poppy plant was of divine origin; opium was variously called the Sacred Anchor Of Life, Milk Of Paradise, the Hand Of God, and Destroyer Of Grief. Medical pioneer Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), sometimes known as 'the English Hippocrates' and 'the Shakespeare of medicine', writes....

"Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium."

This may be overstating God's benevolence; but by relieving emotional as well as physical pain, opiates have been understandably popular. Robert Burton (1577-1640), scholar, priest and author of Anatomy of Melancholy, commended laudanum - essentially opium dissolved in wine - for those who were insomniacs...

"...by reason of their continual cares, fears, sorrows, dry brains [which] is a symptom that much crucifies melancholy men..."

Indeed opium was probably the world's first authentic antidepressant. Unlike other pain-relieving agents such as ethyl alcohol, ether or the barbiturates, opium doesn't impair sensory perception, the intellect or motor co-ordination. Pain ceases to be threatening, intrusive and distressing; but it can still be sensed and avoided. In low doses, opium may sometimes be pleasantly stimulating rather than soporific. In the East, opium was typically treated as a social drug; and opium-smoking was a tool for conviviality. Nowadays a life of habitual opioid use evokes images of stupor and mindless oblivion, yet ironically Coleridge coined the word intensify to describe opium's effects on consciousness.

A significant advance in opium-processing occurred in the sixteenth century. In freebase form, the alkaloids found in opium are significantly less soluble in water than in alcohol. Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1490-1541), better known as Paracelsus, claimed: "I possess a secret remedy which I call laudanum and which is superior to all other heroic remedies". He concocted laudanum [literally: "something to be praised"] by extracting opium into brandy, thus producing, in effect, tincture of morphine. His original witches' brew contained extra ingredients such as crushed pearls, henbane and frog-spawn. It was steeped in alchemical mumbo-jumbo: Paracelsus called opium itself "the stone of immortality". Thomas Sydenham, however, went on to standardise laudanum in the now classic formulation: 2 ounces of opium; 1 ounce of saffron; a drachm of cinnamon and cloves - all dissolved in a pint of Canary wine.

&nbspLaudanum can be habit-forming. Yet the sometimes spectacular ill-effects noted by early modern writers when coming off laudanum probably owed more to its ethyl alcohol content than its opium. As their opioid tolerance increased, so did users' consumption of tinctures: De Quincey's florid withdrawal signs on abstaining...

"I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me; Seva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unuttemble slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud..."

...suggest an alcoholic's delirium tremens rather than a junky's cold-turkey.

By the nineteenth century, vials of laudanum and raw opium were freely available at any English pharmacy or grocery store. One nineteenth-century author declared: "[Laudanum] Drops, you are darling! If I love nothing else, I love you." Another user, the English gentleman quoted in Jim Hogshire's Opium for the Masses (1994), enthused that opium felt akin to a gentle and constant orgasm.

British opium imports rose from a brisk 91,000lb in 1830 to an astonishing 280,000lb in 1860. Despite British control of Indian production, most domestic imports came from Turkey. This was because of the superior morphine content - 10-13% - of Turkish opium; opium's varying potency depends on its particular growing conditions. For obscure reasons, opium was most popular among the rural peasantry of the Fens. The British Medical Association estimated that sparsely populated Cambridgeshire and its environs consumed around half of Britain's annual opium imports. This consumption was topped up by generous use of poppy-tea brewed from homegrown poppies.

Youngsters were introduced to the pleasures of opiates at their mothers' breast. Harassed baby-minders - and overworked parents - found opium-based preparations were a dependable way to keep their kids happy and docile; this was an era before Ritalin. Sales of Godfrey's Cordial, a soothing syrup of opium tincture effective against colic, were prodigious. But Godfrey's Cordial had its competitors: Street's Infants' Quietness, Atkinson's Infants' Preservative, and Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup.

Opium was viewed as a medicine, not a drug of abuse. Contemporary medical theory didn't allow that one could become addicted to a cure. However, the chemists and physicians most actively investigating the properties of opium were also its dedicated consumers; and this may conceivably have coloured their judgement.

Writers of distinction certainly consumed opium in copious quantities. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote Kubla Khan in a dream-like trance while under its spell; opium promotes vivid dreams and rich visual imagery as well as gentle euphoria...

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Down to a sunless sea
...
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome, those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."