Although the Chinese had used opium as a medicine, there was no widespread addiction before the British arrived.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Many Chinese saw opium as a poison introduced by foreign enemies.
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.
Confucianism strongly condemned the use of drugs like opium.
It appears that the English think the Japanese... are fond of opium, and they want to bring it here also.
The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.
Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real.
British passion for Chinese tea was unstoppable, but the Chinese had no desire for our offerings, however much we tried to sell them woolen clothes or cutlery.
If you make a treaty first with the United States and settle the matter of the opium trade, England cannot change this, though she should desire to do so.
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.
There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.