Smoking opium wasn’t technically illegal at the time, so Curran and Neilson were charged with attempting to defraud the government out of tax revenue, according to the Bottineau Courant.

It was in Javanese ports that Chinese sailors learned the habit of smoking tobacco dipped in Dutch-made liquid opium. They brought the practice back to Chinese port cities, where opium dens ...

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In 'Smoke and Ashes,' Amitav Ghosh draws comparisons between America's modern opioid crisis and the West's flooding of China with opium in the 18th century.

A riveting new history of opium, a lucrative and destructive flower. Amitav Ghosh’s sweeping, forcefully written ‘Smoke and Ashes’ covers centuries in the life of the plant ...

Smoke and Ashes explains how opium was primarily consumed in tonic form in India, but because it was smoked in China, it was much more addictive there. The Qing Dynasty banned opium as early as 1729 ...

In his Opium-Smoking in America and China (New York, 1882), Harry Hubbell Kane described an "opium den" in which stood "a pleasant-faced Chinaman who, with scales in hand, was weighing out some opium.

Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories Amitav Ghosh. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $32 (416p) ISBN 978-0-374-60292-5 ...

SMOKE AND ASHES: Opium’s Hidden Histories, by Amitav Ghosh. Biographies of humble things that their authors claimed had “changed the world” — chronometers, salt, ...