Opium, says Dr Bauer, was for the large part of the 19th Century, the second-most important source of revenue for the colonial state. It was only outmatched by land taxes. India remains the world's biggest producer of legal opium for the global pharmaceutical market.
More importantly, the crop, he adds, had a "lasting negative impact on the lives of millions". Interest-free advance payments were offered to poppy farmers who could not access easy credit. By itself, this was not a bad thing for those producing for the global market. What made it bad for them, according to Dr Bauer, was what they paid for rent, manure, irrigation and hired workers was higher than the income from the sale of raw opium.
In other words, the price peasants received for their opium did not even cover the cost of growing it. And they were soon trapped in a "web of contractual obligations from which it was difficult to escape". Stiff production targets fixed by the Opium Agency also meant farmers - the typical poppy cultivator was a small peasant - could not decide whether or not to produce opium. They were "forced to submit part of their land and labour to the colonial government's export strategy".
Local landowners forced their landless tenants to grow poppy; and peasants were also kidnapped, arrested and threatened with destruction of crops, criminal prosecution and jail if they refused to grow the crop. By the opium trade with China, the biggest market, had ended. However, the British Indian monopoly on opium continued until India won independence in What confounds Dr Bauer is "how a few thousand opium clerks controlled millions of peasants, forcing them to produce a crop that actually harms them".
Read more from Soutik Biswas. The General Conditions, among others, include a Minimum Qualifying Yield MQY to be tendered by the cultivators of each of these three states, to be eligible for license in the succeeding year.
Each field of every cultivator is individually measured by officers of the CBN to ensure that they do not exceed the licensed area. The cultivators are required to tender their entire opium produced to the CBN and they are paid a price at the rates decided by the Government. The CBN sets up weighment centres during the harvest season and the cultivators bring their opium to these centres and tender the opium to the CBN. British Expeditionary Forces, explorers and hunters in the North East of India carry opium with them to appease hostile tribes.
Bayer begins production of diacetylmorphine and coins the name "heroin. Nevertheless, this Southeast region, referred to as the 'Golden Triangle', is to become a major player in the profitable opium trade during the 's. Several physicians would argue that their patients suffered from heroin withdrawal symptoms equal to morphine addiction. Congress bans opium smoking. Several physicians experiment with treatments for heroin addiction.
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. 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.
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.
A new system introduced in Burma whereby licenses were allotted to selected vendors at a fixed fee and the profit was determined by the difference between the wholesale rate at which the opium was issued from the treasury and the retail price at which the vendor was required to sell to the customers. A resident excise officer supervised the sale and disposal of the surplus opium every year. Both try to convince the international delegation of the immoral and evil effects of opium. December 17, After 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.
Opium and its derivatives begin to be available all over the world. India's export of opium to China banned in 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. Opium cultivation is banned in Assam, a province in the North-East of India. Agreement for the suppression of opium smoking signed at Bangkok on 27 November Fearful of losing their opium monopoly, the French encourage Hmong farmers to expand their opium production.
Opium is used as a substitute for wages and partly food for conscripted labour in the North East Indian State of Assam engaged in the construction of the kms long Ledo Road to Kunming, Yunan, China.
Pathan contractors are employed by the British to ensure regular supply of opium to the labourers. It was also the deliberate Allied Policy to feed opium to the Kachins in the North West of Burma to seduce them to help them against the Japanese. It was given to the villagers to pay for information about enemy movements and opium was also used for money to pay for chicken, egg, rice, salt, etc.
In fact it had replaced Japanese currency and British silver. Remnants of the Kuomintang Army shelter in the North East of Burma, and are helped by the United States to partly finance their resistance by selling opium, and subsequently heroin. Opium is used first time ever to pay Soldiers in northern Burma. The Protocol amending the agreements, convention and protocols on narcotic drugs signed at Lake Success, New York on 11 December Burma gains independence from Britain in After refining the raw Turkish opium in Marseille laboratories, the heroin is made easily available for purchase by junkies on New York City streets.
The Protocol for bringing under international control drugs outside the scope of the convention of for limiting the manufacture and regulating the distribution of narcotics drugs as amended by the Protocol, signed at Paris on 19 November In order to maintain their relationship with the warlords while continuing to fund the struggle against communism, the U. 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.
To aid U. As well, some of the opium would be transported to Marseille 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. The first reported death of a rock star by drug over dose. He is a major source for raw opium in the profitable drug trade. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs amended by the Protocol of The heroin epidemic subsides.
The search for a new source of raw opium yields Mexico's Sierra Madre. The eradication plan is termed a success as the amount of "Mexican Mud" in the U.
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.
September 13, U. 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. The new act comes into force w. In , Government of India creates Narcotics Control Bureau as an apex organisation to enforce and co-ordinate the drug related matters at national and international level. Shillong Customs in the North East of India seize more than 1.
Shillong Customs organise the first destruction of illicit opium cultivation in the North East. These destruction operation continue till The single largest heroin seizure is made in Bangkok.
The U. Court indicts Khun Sa, leader of the Shan United Army and reputed drug warlord, on heroin trafficking charges. Attorney General's office charges Khun Sa with importing 3, 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.
Drug Enforcement Agency DEA launches its operation to destroy thousands of acres of opium poppies from the fields of the Golden Triangle region. Yet, even in opium is being cultivated illicitly in Thailand, but in smaller areas.
October31, Heroin takes another well-known victim. Twenty-three-year-old actor River Phoenix dies of a heroin-cocaine overdose, the same "speedball" combination that killed comedian John Belushi. January, Efforts to eradicate opium at its source remain 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. Not much research to investigate why more and more youth are becoming addicts.
Why escape from unmanageable process of survival and competition. April Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the Seattle-based alternative rock band, Nirvana, dies of heroin-related suicide.
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