After the mid-18th century, when the British East India Co. was importing tea from China, few could have guessed that the industry would be revolutionized by a different plant: the opium poppy. Over ...

(AP) One Halloween night, in a blacked-out bedroom in Bangkok’s Chinatown, Steven Martin went into physical and mental free fall. High fever oscillated with shivering cold, gut-wrenching stomach pains ...

Bestseller Ghosh (The Great Derangement) offers up a scintillating and kaleidoscopic vision of opium’s role in the past several centuries of global history. Centered mainly on events leading to the ...

One typical opium joint was in the basement of an old building at the southwest corner of Swan and Ellicott — today, that’s Coca-Cola Field. Then, it was “the principal resort for dope fiends,” where ...

How many times this week had he gone to see the dragon? Five? Six? Ten? Fitz had lost count. But he reckoned he went to the den almost every night and paid Ton, the scraggly opium dealer with a ...