Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China (review)

The history of drug use in China has fallen into a familiar set of clichés: that the habit of smoking opium spread throughout China and led to social weakness and inefficiency; that Chinese authorities struggled to fend off the onslaught of the vice but were forced to open markets to the corroding drug by Western imperialism; and that the use of opium demanded increasing doses and left the user in a deplorable physical state. The theme of Narcotic Culture is that these familiar descriptions are false and that the opposite ones are closer to the truth.

How were we so misinformed? According to these authors, the misinformation is a result of "narcophobes" who found in the negative portrayal of opium a convenient, if erroneous, explanation for China's social and political weakness in the nineteenth century. This "opium myth" obscured the reality that smoking opium "had few harmful effects on either health or longevity, that most smokers used it in moderation . . . with inbuilt constraints on excessive use" (206). Attempts to control opium by the "prohibitionists" led only to corruption and a "cure far worse than the disease" (207).

This book was written with a keen awareness of the current debate over substance abuse and takes a strong stand with those opposed to restrictive drug laws. In the attempt to make the case that opium in China was not the destructive force hitherto supposed, the writers make several valuable contributions. They argue that cultural norms regarding smoking and needles (as in acupuncture) prepared the way for the popularity in China of hypodermic syringes as well as the flood of cigarettes that took over the "social functions of opium" (205). Especially interesting is the account of cigarette smoking in China as a symbol of modernization and the parallel decline of opium smoking.

The survey of many Chinese journals and the use of some archival material is a substantial benefit to scholars. There are, however, omissions. Perhaps the most serious is that these authors almost totally ignore the International Opium Commission that met at Shanghai in 1909 and led to the Hague Opium Convention of 1912. At Shanghai, the twentieth century's international antinarcotic movement took form, and the stands of the Chinese and American governments against the non-medical use of opiates were fatefully joined.

This challenging study tends toward the polemic but is nevertheless relevant to contemporary debate.