To this day, the perception persists that China was a civilization defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade commodity, opium—a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in the grip of dependence. Britain, in an effort to reverse the damage caused by opium addiction, launched its own version of a war on drugs, which lasted roughly 60 years, from 1880 to WWII & the beginning of Chinese communism. But, as Narcotic Culture shows, the real scandal in Chinese history wasn't the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early 19th century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp the consequences of prohibition. In an historical reversal, Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann & Zhou Xun tell this different story of the relationship between opium & the Chinese. They reveal that opium actually had few harmful effects on either health or longevity; in fact, it was prepared & appreciated in highly complex rituals with inbuilt constraints preventing excessive use. Opium was even used as a medicinal panacea in China before the availability of aspirin & penicillin. But as a result of the British effort to eradicate it, the Chinese turned from the relatively benign use of that drug to heroin, morphine, cocaine & countless other psychoactive substances. Narcotic Culture provides evidence that the transition from a tolerated opium culture to a system of prohibition produced a cure that was far worse than the disease. Delving into a history of drugs & their abuses, Narcotic Culture is part revisionist history of imperial & 20th-century Britain & part portrait of the dangers of prohibition. Acknowledgements Conventions Introduction The global spread of psychoactive substances c. 1600-1900 Opium before the 'Opium War' c. 1600-1840 Opium for the people: status, space & consumption c. 1840-1940 The best possible & sure shield: Opium, disease & epidemics c. 1840-1940 War on drugs: prohibition & the rise of narcophobia c. 1880-1940 Curing the addict: prohibition & detoxification c. 1880-1940 Pills & powders: the spread of semi-synthetic opiates c. 1900-40 Needle lore: the syringe in China c. 1890-1950 China's other drugs c. 1900-50 Conclusion Bibliography Character List Index