Opium

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Epigraphs

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Chapter 1 – Raw Opium

Chapter 2 – The Discovery of Dreams

Chapter 3 – Pleasure-domes in Xanadu

Chapter 4 – Poverty, Potions and Poppy-heads

Chapter 5 – Heroic Substances

Chapter 6 – God's Own Medicine

Chapter 7 – The Fantasy Traders

Chapter 8 – The Government of Opium

Chapter 9 – Coolies and Conferences

Chapter 10 – Junkies and the Living Dead

Chapter 11 – DORA, Isabella and Olivia

Chapter 12 – Carpets, Condoms and Cats

Chapter 13 – Enter the Mobster

Chapter 14 – Soldiers and Secrets

Chapter 15 – Warlords, Barons and Laundrymen

Chapter 16 – Bacteria and The $1,000,000 Bathtub

Bibliography

Index

Also by Martin Booth

Copyright

 

Opiate—an unlocked door in the prison of identity. It leads into the jail yard.

—Ambrose Bierce,
The Devil's Dictionary

 

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

—Jean Cocteau

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to a large number of people for their considerable assistance, support and encouragement in the researching and writing of this book. To the following I offer my heartfelt gratitude for, without them, the task could not have been completed: Dr Terry Boyce of the University of Hong Kong; Dr Ingrid Hook and the staff of the Department of Pharmacognosy, School of Pharmacy, Trinity College, Dublin; the librarian and staff of the University of Hong Kong Library; John Keep, H.M. Customs & Excise, London; A. Renouf, H.M. Customs & Excise, Jersey; J.L.S. Keesing, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew; Dr Neil Bruce of the Institute of Biotechnology, Cambridge University; Dr Brigid Allen, the Archivist, Jesus College, Oxford; Jeffrey Robinson; Kevin Laurie of the Police Tactical Unit, Royal Hong Kong Police; William L. Ruzzamenti, Office of Congressional & Public Affairs, the US Department of Justice; Vera Savko of the Mayor's Office, St Petersburg; Roger Lewis of the Centre for HIV/AIDS and Drugs Studies, Edinburgh; Superintendent Clive Tricker and Sen. Insp. Ricky Fung Hing-nam of the Narcotics Bureau, Royal Hong Kong Police; Maureen Sheehan, the Poppy Advisory and Control Board, Tasmania; Dr Harry Payne and David Mercer of MacFarlan Smith, Ltd; the Intelligence Division of the US Drug Enforcement Administration; Cathay Pacific Airways; John Powell, Somerset County Libraries; Murray Pollinger, my literary agent and a large number of people in Britain, the USA, Hong Kong, Thailand, Russia and Eastern Europe who operate at the barricades of the war against heroin and other drugs and who, for security reasons, must remain anonymous, but who have my considerable admiration.

Finally, my wife Helen whose considerable skill and research assistance, patience, forbearance and months before a computer monitor were utterly invaluable and without which this book would not have been written.

Foreword

In 1398, the following words were translated from the writings of John de Trevisa: ‘Of popy comyth iuys that physycyens callyth Opium other Opion'. Approximately two years later, in Lanfrank's
Science of cirugie,
appeared the advice, ‘It is not yuel to putte a litil opium to þe oile of þe rosis'. What the physicians used opium for, or what good it did when mixed with oil of roses, was not stated until Jerome of Brunswick published his
The noble experyence of the vertuous handyworke of surgeri.
Translated into English in 1525, it contained an early reference to opium as a medicinal drug: ‘Whan the payne is grete, then it is nedefull to put therto a lytell Opium'.

Few nouns can be more evocative than opium. Derived from the ancient Greek for the sap of the poppy pod, it has moved a long way from its original innocent meaning. It simultaneously conjures up exotic images of murky drug dens filled with besotted addicts, white slavers and Fu Manchu-like fiends, maudlin and tubercular Romantic poets and, by association, alleyways across the cities of the world littered with discarded hypodermic needles, trained sniffer dogs going over airline baggage, haggard youths shooting up heroin in public lavatory cubicles, AIDS sufferers and prostitutes, mafiosi, drug barons riding in sleek limousines, machine-gun-toting smugglers, street-corner peddlers and Hollywood gangster movies.

To an addict, opium and its derivatives are the raw substance of dreams, the means of escape from reality and temporary entry into heaven – or at least another place apart from the here and now: it is also slave-master, cruel mistress and possessive lover. For narcotics agents, law enforcement or customs officers, opium is the source of the evil by the hunting down of which they earn a salary and may lose their life. To politicians and their secret service operatives, it is the ideal substance of subversion and political instability. Those dedicated to the eradication of drugs from society regard it as being just as much their
raison d'être,
their quest, even their holy grail, as it is the junkie's: they both search for it with a zealot's avidity. For the racketeer, opium is a means to considerable wealth for a comparatively low capital outlay. And there are those who find it has other uses: poisoners kill with it and have done so since at least Roman times; terrorists finance mayhem with it; urban crime is fuelled by it; arms dealers use it as a form of currency and governments are either blackmailed by it or employ it to corrupt or to apply pressure to other administrations, nations or political adversaries. Opium (in the form of heroin) accounts for an illicit multi-national trade which is larger than that of many countries.

In short, society is undermined – some might say underpinned – by opium.

Yet for all these detrimental aspects, opium has a benign side. The economies of some countries depend upon it, the opium harvest being all that stands between social stability and political overthrow, well-being and disease or starvation. Many a Third World peasant farmer regards opium as a steady, reliable, easily grown and harvested cash crop. For the terminal cancer patient, opium and its derivatives afford a blessed relief from the tortures and indignities of pain. Even a passing headache can be eradicated by an opiate bought over the counter of many a pharmacist's shop.

In other words, opium and its derivatives are all things to all men and have been so for centuries.

The story of opium goes back well before the nineteenth century invention of heroin, opium clippers riding the South China Sea, the discovery of morphine, poets habituated to laudanum, the rudimentary pharmacology of the Middle Ages and the political machinations of ambitious Roman murderers. It has its origins in the start of human society and its use almost certainly pre-dates civilisation. In fact, there seems little doubt that opium was one of the first medicinal substances known to mankind.

1

Raw Opium

The opium poppy is botanically classified as
Papaver somniferum.
The genus is named from the Greek noun for a poppy, the species from the Latin word meaning ‘sleep inducing': it was Linnaeus, the father of botany, who first classified it in his book
Genera Plantarum
in 1753. Like many of his contemporaries, and generations before him, he was well aware of its capabilities.

The plant has a dubious history. Some horticulturists consider it evolved naturally, but there are others who claim it is a cultivor developed by century upon century of careful human cultivation. Another theory is that it is a naturally mutated plant which evolved because of a quirk of climate or altitude. This is not far-fetched for plants will take on atypical forms in unique conditions: the cannabis trees of Bhutan prove the point. No one can be certain.

Although there is no positive proof, it is thought
P. somniferum
may have evolved, or been generated, either from the wild poppy,
Papaver setigerum,
which contains small amounts of opium and which indigenously grows throughout the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, or from a poppy native to Asia Minor.

To many not specifically engaged in its cultivation, the poppy is either an ornamental flower with a delicate beauty or a simple, scarlet blossom growing wild in the cereal fields of Europe, an image for the blood spilled in the trenches of the First World War. In fact, it comes from a large botanical family of 28 genera and over 250 individual species, most of which grow in the temperate and sub-tropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Many popular varieties have been specifically cultivated: the bush and tree poppies, the Welsh poppy, the blue and Syrian tulip poppies, the alpine poppy, the sub-arctic Iceland poppy, the Californian poppy. Even the opium poppy itself may be found in borders and displays in well-kept gardens, albeit illegally in most countries. In its wild state, the poppy is a single bloom but double flowers and specialist blooms with serrated and fringed petals have also been bred in a multitude of colours: the most exquisite are two variations of the opium poppy, the Pink Chiffon and the Pæony-flowered Mixed. Several species, such as the Oriental poppy from Asia Minor, are perennials.

Of all these species, only
P. somniferum
and
P. bracteatum
produce opium in any significant amount, although the latter is not used at present as a commercial drug source but is sometimes grown as a decorative blossom from which a number of hybrids have derived.

Papaver somniferum
is an annual with a growth cycle of approximately 120 days. It requires a rich, well-cultivated soil and, in the wild, is more likely to flourish in recently dug or ploughed ground, hence its presence in farm fields and, traditionally, by cart tracks and animal droves. The best growing climate is temperate, warm with low humidity and not too much rainfall during early growth. Ideally, although it will grow in clay or sandy clay, the best soil is a sandy loam which retains nutrients and moisture and is not too hard for the delicate early roots to penetrate. Both excessive and insufficient rainfall affect growth: too much moisture causes waterlogging and, if the soil is not properly drained, the plants will quickly die whilst dull, cloudy weather or excessive rain in days thirty to ninety of the growth period will reduce the opium-producing capabilities. Sunlight is especially important. The opium poppy is a ‘long day' photo-responsive plant which means it will not produce blooms unless it has grown through a period of long days and short nights, preferably with direct sunlight at least twelve hours daily.

These requirements aside, the plant is easy to grow. It does not require irrigation unless it is in danger of drying out, demands no expensive fertilisers, has few pests or ailments and, therefore, requires no insecticides or fungicides.

The seeds (about the size of a pin-head) are naturally sown by the pod blowing in the breeze and shaking like a pepper-pot, the contents scattering. When deliberately set, they are either broadcast or dropped in rows of shallow holes made by a stick or dibber, the timing of the sowing depending heavily upon local seasonal and climatic conditions. About 500 grams of seed are sown to half a hectare. The seeds may range over a wide variety of colours from white through yellow to brown, grey or black, the coloration not being relevant to the eventual blossom. Other cash crops, such as beans, peas or tobacco, may be planted alongside the poppy: these do not hinder it and are usually only a means of obtaining a higher return from the same area of land.