Opium (31 page)

In other words, they were welcome as minions but only so long as they could work: and there was no mention of helping them kick the habit.

As they frequently do to this day, the Chinese communities kept to themselves in self-imposed ghettos, often on the rough side of town where other racial groups spurned them. It was therefore inevitable the only non-Asians they met were other outcasts, those of the criminal underworld.

The first white man to smoke opium is said to have been a gambler called Clendenyn, in San Francisco in 1868. Presumably as a saloon gambler and perhaps a petty criminal, he was working the Chinese dens. The practice soon gained popularity. The exclusivity of the dens gave a sense of protection and identity to these minor outlaws, shunned by their own kind but willingly hosted by the Chinese. The dens, colloquially known as ‘dives' or ‘joints', became centres of criminal activity. The origin of the words is interesting: ‘dive' is an abbreviation of divan and therefore directly related to opium whilst ‘joint' derives from an Anglo-Irish word for a low ante-room, such as was found in brothels where prostitutes entertained their clients.

As the American West opened up eastward, the Chinese spread and established their communities, each with at least one den providing not only a smoking base and meeting place but also a network of safe houses for the non-Asian criminal fraternity. Some dens were elaborate multi-bunk houses – of the twenty-six operating in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1885, most catered for twenty-four smokers at a time and were located mainly in an area bounded by Stockton, Washington, Dupont and Pacific Streets. Others were just rooms of chop-houses or Chinese laundries, stores or lodging houses.

Opium smoking reached its summit in 1883 with the importation, mostly through San Francisco, of 208,152 pounds of smoking opium. The actual size of the addict population was unknown but the
San Francisco Evening Post
estimated in 1875 there were 120,000 opium addicts in the United States, but said the figure
excluded
the Chinese.

From the late nineteenth century, opium dens were to become more than just houses of addiction and crime. They were the birthplace of the American drug subculture, a cosmopolitan fusion of Oriental and Occidental mores, myths and values. An esoteric argot developed: ‘the long draw' was an ability to inhale an entire opium pill with one breath, those who prepared opium pills and pipes were called ‘chefs' and the smoking habit was known as ‘yen', from the verb ‘to smoke' in the Peking dialect. Many of these words later entered the general vocabulary, carried by non-criminal bohemian smokers such as actors and writers who imbibed: today, ‘to have a yen' means to possess a longing for something.

Although opium smoking was nothing like as widespread as morphine injecting, it was viewed by the public with horror. This was not based upon the fear of addiction but upon racial hatred: the Chinese were regarded as the Yellow Peril and to be avoided.

This racial attitude affected not only public but official opinion. It was said, without much foundation, that respectable women were visiting the dens to engage in sexual intercourse with the dreaded Celestials, their sexual appetites having been aroused by opium. That opium was a narcotic was conveniently overlooked by the xenophobes. None the less, reports of debauchery circulated: a San Francisco doctor, Winslow Anderson, claimed he saw the ‘sickening sight of young white girls from sixteen to twenty years of age lying half-undressed on the floor or couches, smoking with their lovers. Men and women, Chinese and white people, mix in Chinatown smoking houses.' Probably one of the first instances of the association of race, drugs and sex, it was surely inaccurate: any woman to be found in such a state in an opium den was likely to be a prostitute.

It was only a matter of time before action was taken. In 1875 the San Francisco municipal authority, under the pressure of offended public opinion, passed an ordinance forbidding the smoking of opium, the possession of opium or the paraphernalia needed to smoke it and the organising of a smoking house. Virginia City, with a substantial Chinese population, followed suit in 1876. Enforcement was patchy. Those dens to which whites went were closed down, on racial grounds, but smaller establishments catering primarily for Chinese were ignored.

The result of the ordinance in most places was simply to transfer non-Chinese smokers to boarding houses owned by Caucasians on the fringes of Chinese residential areas, where they continued their habit, whilst wealthy users frequently set up their own dens for well-heeled clients and friends. Supplies were obtained through Chinese opium merchants.

Despite local ordinances being passed in twenty-seven states by 1915, opium smoking steadily increased until federal legislation was enacted which made the vice so risky and expensive smokers turned to other opiate use. In this lay part of the root of the problem as it exists now: smoking, whilst harmful, was far less dangerous than injecting morphine or, in due course, injecting or smoking heroin.

Imported smoking opium or domestically produced supplies made from raw opium imports were heavily taxed, the levy of 75 cents an ounce sufficiently exorbitant as to encourage vast smuggling operations run almost exclusively by the
tongs.
In addition, large numbers of Chinese set up in business as ‘cooks' running ‘opium kitchens' in which, in direct contravention of the 1890 law prohibiting non-native Americans from engaging in opium manufacture, they processed raw opium into the smoking product.

By the end of the century, demand for smoking opium reached a plateau then began to fall, mainly because the Chinese population similarly began to drop due to immigration controls and voluntary repatriation in the face of racial abuse. Nevertheless, it was realised the only way to combat opium was not in individual state legislatures but federally.

Hamilton Wright, preparing for the 1909 conference in Shanghai, lobbied Congress for federal legislation. If the USA was to lead the world against opium, he argued, it had to put its own house in order, too. Yet there was more to it. With some states prohibiting opium and others not, there was a brisk inter-state smuggling traffic which had to be addressed.

Just before the Shanghai conference, the Senate passed the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act which illegalised all imports of opium save those brought in by registered pharmaceutical firms. Severe fines and terms of imprisonment were put in place and possession was sufficient cause for arrest. Suddenly, opium was regarded as a criminal substance to which was attributed the romantic thrill of the danger of illegality. It also suggested opium was an alien substance, contrary to the American way of life – a filthy Oriental habit – which set the tone for drug enforcement. As might have been expected, smuggling increased sharply, the street price of opium rose and criminal gangs started to make substantial profits.

Wealthy smokers, especially those connected to show business, high-class call-girls and rich criminals, maintained their smoking habit, protected by their riches or position from arrest or shortage. By the 1920s, most of the major American cities had opium-smoking locations: those with gangster residents, such as Miami, New York and Chicago, were particularly well catered for as was Los Angeles with its movie industry. In Errol Flynn's autobiography,
My Wicked, Wicked Ways,
he describes in detail his smoking of opium in a den, being introduced to the place by a Chinese girl called Ting Ling. Inevitably, Flynn insists opium improved his sexual capabilities, rather than suppressing them.

Opium smoking was fashionable. Smokers, colloquially known as ‘pipies', considered themselves a drug élite and superior to heroin users. Newspaper stories circulated about parties held for smoking, the guests arriving in their pyjamas as if ready for bed: sex and drugs were already inseparable. For the vast majority of smokers, who were not protected by fame or fortune, there was only one alternative: they turned to morphine and heroin which were cheaper to buy, easier to hide and less conspicuous to use. In time, the smoking élite also turned to other drugs, as smoking opium became more and more rare and less was smuggled because of its bulk.

The crackdown also affected the Chinese. The Californian police mounted a concerted, 18 month drive starting in 1913, resulting in 1200 convictions and a public bonfire of opium and pipes. Many of these were not merely drug equipment but valuable antiques centuries old. Reluctant at first to give up smoking, the Chinese were also eventually forced to change to morphine and heroin, the last smokers disappearing in the New York area during the Second World War.

Hamilton Wright continued his campaigning but, for all his philanthropic intention, he was also a scaremonger playing upon xenophobic and racial unease, stressing the dangers drugs posed to white people: in 1910, he published a report, playing upon racial fear, in which he wrote negroes in the South were taking cocaine which put white women at risk, presumably from fornication. This was clearly bunkum but it set a trend, an attitude towards drugs which has survived. What was more, statistics released to the public grossly exaggerated addict numbers so the drug problem seemed far greater than it was: from 1910 to 1940, attitudes towards opiate addiction which, at times, verged on the hysterical, were profoundly influenced by erroneous and occasionally deliberately manipulated figures, though obtaining accurate statistics about addicts has always been difficult because they do not volunteer to be counted.

After agreement made at the Hague Conference of 1911 and due to Wright's work, the Harrison Narcotic Act – called after its instigator, Congressman Francis Burton Harrison – was passed in 1914. It did not actually prohibit narcotics as force doctors, chemists and other legalised dealers to register, pay a nominal tax and maintain records of drug transactions. There was, however, a loophole depending upon medical opinion and legal interpretation. If addiction was considered a disease, a doctor was obligated to cure it: if it was seen to be a vice, his prescription might maintain (or feed) addiction, thus making him commit a criminal offence. In 1919, the Supreme Court came down in favour of the latter interpretation and, over the next quarter of a century, 25,000 doctors were prosecuted for prescribing narcotics to addicts. The ruling gave rise to ‘dope doctors', corrupt general practitioners who prescribed opiates for cash, the addict's alternative being the criminal underworld. This further reduced addiction amongst middle-class white women who were loathe or afraid to associate with criminals.

Illicit heroin was readily obtainable throughout metropolitan areas in America. It was cheaper than morphine and gave a bigger, quicker kick. Those who could not inject it, snorted it. Addiction being what it was, criminals charged increasing sums for supplies, driving their clients to petty crime to pay for their habit. Simultaneously, cocaine was legislated against, leading many users to move over to heroin.

Heroin had for some time been used by young men in the underworld but rarely outside it. From 1910, however, heroin usage spread like wildfire across America. By the time alcohol was prohibited in 1920, heroin was well established and, with the added repression on liquor, the stage was set for the arrival of the junkie.

The term ‘junkie', so common today, is thought to have been coined in the early 1920s, although opium was referred to as ‘junk' at the turn of the century. Originally, it meant a junk-man, a rag-and-bone man or totter who travelled the streets buying scrap metal, wood and cloth. Aware of the fact garbage could have a value, New York City addicts earned money by picking through the city dumps for discarded metal to sell.

Other American colloquialisms existed from time to time: an addict was variously known as a ‘schmecker' (from the Yiddish
shmek,
meaning a smell or sniff), a ‘hype' (from hypodermic) and a ‘hophead'. The latter has a fascinating derivation. In the late nineteenth century, when the Chinese were the main suppliers of opium, the drug was known as ‘hop'. This was an Anglicised, shortened version of the colloquial Cantonese name for opium,
nga pin,
pronounced
ha peen,
and meaning bird or crow shit. In white American society, this was melded with hops, as used in beer, to imply a substance of intoxication.

Most heroin addicts were addicted in their late teens or early twenties, although a substantial number were older, having transferred from opium or morphine. The vast majority were male and, until the 1940s, Caucasians outnumbered blacks. New York street gangs were especial breeding grounds for addicts. Heroin use was a part of gang initiation, an aspect of the destructive and dangerous pastimes in which gang members traditionally indulged. Indeed, New York was as now the heroin centre of America, the base for almost every heroin dealer in the nation: 90 per cent of America's heroin addicts lived within 180 miles of Manhattan. Downtown precincts were the addicts' territory, the tenements and low-cost housing blocks containing poor families in which addiction was frequently rife. Addicts roamed the streets, looking like bums. Those addicts who were not reduced to sorting junk typically held low-paid, semi- or unskilled jobs whilst the small number of female addicts were virtually all prostitutes.

For several years from 1919, addicts in cities across America were catered for by a chain of forty-four clinics which sought to gather statistics on addiction, register addicts, supply them with drugs and examine their problem. One, set up along strict disciplined lines by the New York City Health Department, was a visitor attraction like a working theme park and featured on city tours. The clinics were a failure because widespread street peddling supplied addicts without their having to submit to a clinical regime, attendance at them was not compulsory and the 1919 Supreme Court judgment in effect made them illegal because they were seen as maintaining a vice. By 1921 all but one – in Shreveport, Louisiana, which remained open until 1923 – were closed by the federal authorities.