Conversely they could represent a mistake and/or bad data. How they would get accurate data on drug addiction in 1880 is itself a cause for speculation.
For China, we have good records because the British KEPT very good records of Opium shipments.
Conversely they could represent a mistake and/or bad data. How they would get accurate data on drug addiction in 1880 is itself a cause for speculation.
For China, we have good records because the British KEPT very good records of Opium shipments.
And all this opium rage represented Chinese making free choices? No pushing?
Conversely they could represent a mistake and/or bad data. How they would get accurate data on drug addiction in 1880 is itself a cause for speculation.
If you have better numbers on U.S. drug addiction in 1880, I'd be fascinated to see them. Absent that, the available evidence is that U.S. opium addiction was low and declining when it was legal.
For China
China is not America, and there's no evidence that America's addiction rate was ever anything remotely like China's. Addiction experts tell us that culture and environment are important factors in addiction.
Great post of actual opium shipments - about 10 million pounds sterling per year.
So with your 100 million Chinese addicts, that’s about 2 shillings a year per user.
Either that’s some cheap smack, or your number of addicts is off by a factor of say...an order of magnitude or two.
Existential crisis? Hah!