Opium
:
This article is about the drug. For other meanings of "opium", see opium (disambiguation). For opium-derived and opium-like substances, see opioid.
Opium is a narcotic analgesic drug which is obtained from the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum
L. or the synonym paeoniflorum'').
 |
Depiction of opium smokers in an "opium den" in the East End of London, 1874. |
To harvest opium, the skin of the ripening pods is scored by a sharp blade. The slashes exude a white, milky
latex, which dries to a sticky brown resin that is scraped off the pods as raw opium.
 |
Harvesting opium. |
Opium has powerful narcotic properties. Its constituents and derivatives are used as painkillers. Therefore, legal opium production is allowed under the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and other international drug treaties, subject to strict supervision by the law enforcement agencies of individual countries. The leading legal producer of opium is India, which is also the only place on earth where opium is still legally harvested by the traditional method of incising the pods. Other important national cultivators of opium poppies for the pharmaceutical industry are Tasmania in
Australia, and
France. Several other countries cultivate the poppy to satisfy the demand of their domestic pharmaceutical companies, but not for export. However, it is not strictly true to say that these nations produce opium. They cultivate papaver somniferum, but the alkaloids are collected via the Gregory process, whereby the entire poppy, excluding roots and leaves, is mashed and stewed in dilute acid solutions. The alkaloids are then recovered via Acid/Base extraction and purified. This process was developed in the UK during World War II, when wartime shortages of many essential drugs encouraged innovation in pharmaceutical processing. The French company
Francopia produces 20% to 25% of the world's total requirement for legal opiates, with total sales of approximately
€60 million. The UN treaty requires that every country submit annual reports to the International Narcotics Control Board, stating that year's actual consumption of many classes of controlled drugs as well as opiates, and projecting required quantities for the next year. This is to allow trends in consumption to be monitored, and production quotas allotted. The market for export of controlled drugs is fixed by regulation, in part due to the discovery in the 1930's that huge amounts of opiates had been diverted from the legal pharmaceutical market to the black market via a complex web of front companies and forged declarations. The main participants at that time were Swiss pharmaceutical producers and brokers, and the military regime in pre-World War 2 Japan, who claimed to be consuming thousands of tonnes of opium, morphine and heroin. The products were in fact transported to China, where opium was directly used as part of the Japanese policy of annexation of Manchuria, and other aggression against China.
A recent proposal from the European Senlis Council hopes to solve the problems caused by the massive quantity of opium produced illegally in
Afghanistan, most of which is converted to heroin, and smuggled for sale in Europe and the USA. This proposal is to licence Afghan farmers to produce opium for the world pharmaceutical market, and thereby solve another problem, that of chronic underuse of potent analgesics where required within developing nations. In the industrialised world the USA is the world's biggest consumer of prescription opiates, with Italy one of the lowest. The Italian medical profession seems to have recently accepted that opiates have applications apart from pain relief in terminal cancer. Recorded Italian consumption has increased considerably of late.
To this end Senlis arranged a conference in Kabul, to discuss the idea, but it remains to be seen if this will happen; internal security and corruption issues within Afghanistan make it unlikely that they soon will be able to meet the stringent UN requirements for legal production of opiates for export. If the record of CIA interference with attempts to "buy and burn" illicit Burmese opium harvests in the past is considered (McCoy, 1991), Afghanistan's opium may be a major part of current War on Drugs policies for some time.
Raw opium must be processed and refined (called "cooking") before it is suitable for smoking. The raw opium is first
dissolved in
water and simmered over a low heat. The brown solution is then filtered to remove the insoluble vegetable
waxes and then evaporated over a low heat. The result is a smokable form of opium with a considerably higher
morphine content percentage-wise than the raw
latex. This is then pressed into bricks and either transported to
heroin laboratories or used as is.
Although opium is used in the form of
paregoric to treat
diarrhea, most opium imported into the United States is broken down into its
alkaloid constituents. These alkaloids are divided into two distinct chemical classes,
phenanthrenes and
isoquinolines. The principal phenanthrenes are
morphine,
codeine, and
thebaine, while the isoquinolines have no significant
central nervous system effects and are not regulated under the
Controlled Substances Act. Opium is also processed into heroin, and most current
drug use occurs with processed derivatives rather than with raw opium.
The seed capsules also contain morphine,
codeine, and other alkaloids. These pods can be steeped in water to produce a bitter
tea that induces a long-lasting intoxication.
Opium resin contains two groups of
alkaloids:
phenanthrenes (including
morphine and
codeine) and
benzylisoquinolines (including
papaverine). Morphine is by far the most prevalent and important alkaloid in opium, consisting of 10%-16% of the total. It binds to and activates μ-opioid
receptors in the brain, spinal cord, stomach and intestine. Regular use, even for a few days, invariably leads to physical tolerance and dependence. Various degrees of psychological
addiction can occur, though this is relatively rare when opioids are used for treatment of pain, rather than for euphoric effects. These mechanisms result from changes in nervous system receptors in response to the drug. In response to the drug, the brain creates new receptors for opiates. These receptors are "pseudo" receptors and do not work. When the opiates are out of the body, the brain has the same amount of
endogenous opiate (
endorphins) to fill these receptors, but less of the functional receptors and more non-functional ones. Abstaining from the drug for a time allows the brain to replace the pseudo receptors with functioning ones (a gradual process).
Since being universally outlawed, the production of opium significantly decreased around the world, despite an increasing demand. Opium is still being produced today legally for medicine. Afghanistan is currently the number one producer of the drug. During
Taliban rule, the production of opium significantly decreased to 74
metric tons per year, but after the toppling of the Taliban by the
Northern Alliance with foreign support in 2001, production has increased again. Opium exports make up a very large portion of Afghanistan's GDP, alongside natural gas and agriculture. According to DEA statistics, Afghanistan's production of oven-dried opium increased to 1,278 metric tons in 2002 shortly after the U.S. led invasion. Recent DEA statistics say that production more than doubled by 2003, and nearly doubled again during 2004. By 2004, Afghanistan was accountable for 87% of the world's opium supply, according to United States Assistant
Secretary of State Bobby Charles. In late 2004, the CIA estimated that 206,000
hectares were under poppy cultivation and that the new crop would generate 7 billion dollars worth of heroin. "There is no other country in the world that has 206,000 hectares under cultivation of any drug," said Charles.
Besides Afghanistan, smaller quantities of opium are produced in Pakistan,
Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia (particularly,
Myanmar),
Colombia and
Mexico. Opium is typically not transported and sold raw. Instead, specialized chemical factories are used to convert it into
heroin - much more potent and compact form of the drug.[
1] [
2]
The image of the poppy capsule was an attribute of deities, long before opium was extracted from its milky latex. At the
Metropolitan Museum's Assyrian relief gallery, a winged deity in a bas-relief from the palace of
Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, dedicated in
879 BC, bears a bouquet of poppy capsules on long stems, described by the museum as "
pomegranates".
Until the practice of smoking was introduced to Europe and Asia after
tobacco smoking in the Americas was observed and copied, opium was mostly either eaten or drunk. An early form of opium smoking involved the consumption of
madak, a blend of tobacco and opium that became common in Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries. By the 19th century, in part because of a ban on madak in China, smoking of pure opium became more common. By this time, opium use had become widespread across much of the world, although consumption patterns and routes of administration varied.
Beginning with territorial conquest in
India (in
1757), the
British East India Company pursued a
monopoly on opium production and export in India. This was met with varying degrees of success, but had a serious impact on the peasant cultivators (ryots) who were often coerced or offered cash advances on their crops to encourage cultivation. This was something that was not done for any other crops, save for
indigo. The product was sold by the chest in auctions in Calcutta and then smuggled into China. The East India Company used the profit to purchase teas which was in high demand in Britain.
The import of opium in China began causing a drain of silver which severely stunted the economy. This, in combination with the detrimental effects on the population initiated a response by the Chinese government. This response led to the
Opium Wars. The first opium war led to
Britain seizing
Hong Kong and to what the Chinese term the "century of shame". This illegal trade became one of the world's most valuable single commodity trades and was described by the eminent
Harvard University historian
John K. Fairbank as "the most long continued and systematic international crime of modern times."
Opium can be smoked, sometimes in combination with
tobacco, but a high temperature is required to vaporise the alkaloids, so special opium pipes with spherical porcelain 'bowls' are traditionally used. A small blob of opium is stuck near the hole in the pipe 'bowl' - it is a very gummy substance and adheres without difficulty. The smoker â€" reclining beside a small burner â€" blows through the pipe onto a piece of glowing charcoal to increase the heat it gives off. When the opium starts to vaporise, the smoker begins to inhale. Another common smoking technique is to vaporise the material on a piece of metal foil, heated from below with a cigarette lighter. The vapor is then inhaled through a small tube. This is called 'chasing the dragon', and is also a common way of smoking the other notorious illegal opiates -
morphine and
heroin.
Thomas De Quincey's
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is one of the first literary accounts of opium addiction written from the point of view of an addict, in the early 1820s. Later, Opium smoking became associated with immigrant Chinese communities around the world, with "
opium dens" becoming notorious fixtures of many
Chinatowns.
There were no legal restrictions on the importation or use of opium in the
United States until a San Francisco, California ordinance which banned the smoking of opium in opium dens in 1875. The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 prohibited its importation. Other important legislation included the
Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of
1914. Before this time, medicines often contained opium without any warning label. U.S president
William Henry Harrison was treated with opium in 1841. Countless miracle cures contained opium, which of course was the reason many of these were so successful, since people started taking these cures because they made them feel good. Opium was even touted as an alcoholism cure, evidently to the wives of alcoholics. This would be because an opium addict, capable of supporting his habit on about 5 cents a day, would likely be a more suitable companion for a wife - being placid and calm, mostly - than an alcoholic husband. Today, there are numerous national and international laws governing the production and distribution of
narcotic substances. In particular,
Article 23 of the
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs requires opium-producing nations to designate a government agency to take physical possession of licit opium crops as soon as possible after harvest and conduct all wholesaling and exporting through that agency. Opium's pharmaceutical use is strictly controlled worldwide and non-pharmaceutical uses are generally prohibited.
Opium poppies are popular and attractive garden plants, whose flowers vary greatly in colour, size and form. A modest amount of domestic cultivation in private gardens is not usually subject to legal controls. The dried seed cases are often used for decorations, and the small seeds themselves - which contain negligible amounts of any opiate alkaloids - are a common and flavoursome topping for breads and cakes.
The sleep-inducing properties of opium are presented in the classic movie,
The Wizard of Oz. At one point in the film Dorothy and her friends are drawn by the wicked witch into a field of poppies, in which they fall asleep.
Opium has been a major item of trade for centuries, and has long been used as a painkiller and
sedative. It was well known to the
ancient Greeks, who named it
opion ("poppy juice"), from which the present name—a
Latinisation—is derived. Many
patent medicines of the
19th century were based around
laudanum (known as "tincture of opium", a solution of opium in
ethyl alcohol). As a result of this substance being branded a miracle cure for many common illnesses (ranging from colds to alcoholism), the substance developed a very large number of addicts at the time. Fortunately for these addicts, they did not lose their jobs or much of their respectability as a result of this, and an opium addiction was considered more similar to a gambling or alcohol addiction. Also, since a man could remain an opium addict on 5 cents a day, it did not cause undue financial strain, and therefore no damage to the person was caused that one living under an 'addict' lifestyle in the modern sense would risk suffering. Tincture of opium is prescribed in modern times, among other reasons, for ongoing, severe diarrhea caused, for example, by the creation of an
ileostomy. A 10% tincture of opium solution (10% opium, 90% ethyl alcohol) taken 30 minutes prior to meals will significantly slow intestinal motility, giving the intestines greater time to absorb fluid in the stool.
*
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater*
Malwa*
Opioid*
Opium of the masses*
Opium Wars *
Poppy tea*
Psychoactive drug *
Symphonie Fantastique*
The Papaver Somniferum Photo Gallery*
Photos of opium poppies on www.geopium.org
