Wider Economic and Social Attitudes to Opium

 Notes from Shock City Unit on Opium Addiction 

Drug Use in the 19^th century

Laudanum popular

Early 19^th century romantic era

Opium wars 1839 – 60 Chinese immigration and opium dens

Opium coming from India to China, EIC, taking over the Indian trade and pushing it into China, Shang hi addiction problem

Massively exaggerated, social anxiety around opium.

Laudanum the poor child’s nurse

Class framing – working-class use of drugs, laudanum and cocaine, through medicine popular for babies. Gin mother’s ruin. How much this happened is unknown but this is how it’s been framed.

Bohemia – artist life and the use of opium, pre-Raphaelites. Maddox brown and Rossetti

Cannabis, cocoa leaf

Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral – alcohol and opium

1840’s invention of hypodermic needle – morphine and heroin

Laudanum addiction common as it was cheaper than gin or wine.

Neurasthenia – women’s complaint, nervous disease. After WW1, PTSD. Shell shock.

Regulation of drugs

Increasing attacks on unregulated chemists

1868 Pharmacy Act, regulated poisons

1908 Poisons and Pharmacy Act regulations on sales and labelling

1914 Defence of the Realm Act DORA sale, possession of cocaine limited to authorised persons

1920 Dangerous Drugs Act, Limited production, import, export, possession, sale and distribution of opium, cocaine, morphine or heroin to licensed persons.

 The attitudes to opium use and addiction were reliant on the class system, wealthier classes were viewed as bohemian and romantic for using opium, the lower classes were viewed as frivolous addicts. 

Unknown, Opium Den 1920's New York, photograph, Dangerous Minds, [accessed 14 June 2022]