There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Many Chinese saw opium as a poison introduced by foreign enemies.
Although the Chinese had used opium as a medicine, there was no widespread addiction before the British arrived.
It appears that the English think the Japanese... are fond of opium, and they want to bring it here also.
I think you can go back in history and look at what the effect in Asia and the world was of a divided, fractured China from, you know, the opium wars through the Chinese civil war, and I don't think it was pretty for Asia or the world.
Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
The expense of a war could be paid in time; but the expense of opium, when once the habit is formed, will only increase with time.
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
If America is addicted to foreign money and foreign oil, then China is addicted to foreign supplies of just about every commodity known to man - save highly polluting coal.
The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.
Confucianism strongly condemned the use of drugs like opium.