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The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton

Refutation of the fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher



September 3, 2023



"The strong craving that characterizes opiate addiction has inspired many critics of the drugs to suggest that narcotics destroy the will and moral sense, turning normal people into fiends and degenerates. Actually, cravings for opiates are no different from cravings for alcohol among alcoholics, and they are less strong than cravings for cigarettes, a more addictive drug." --Andrew Weil in "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs"1



Click on the above audio link to listen to a multi-narrator audio version of 'The Truth about Opium'. The text for "The Truth about Opium" may be found at Project Gutenberg.


Important Points





  1. "The poppy is indigenous to China... and has been used in China for various purposes for thousands of years."

  2. "[Opium] is not only harmless but beneficial to the system, unless when practised to an inordinate extent, which is wholly exceptional; whilst spirit drinking ruins the health, degrades the character, incites its victims to acts of violence, and destroys the prospects of everyone who indulges to excess in the practice."

  3. Opium smoking and opium eating are two different things, despite the attempt of opium opponents to confuse the two.

  4. Chinese officials were never driven by public health motives in their opium policies.

  5. Much anti-opium sentiment in UK was aroused by a BIG LIE passed on by an American missionary, who declared that there were two million deaths from opium every year in China, which was an utter falsehood, as regular opium use was more often associated with longevity than with premature death.

  6. "All these anti-opium articles, speeches, and resolutions are based upon the same model. They assume certain statements as existing and acknowledged facts which have never been proved to be such, and then proceed to draw deductions from those alleged facts."






Author's Follow-up: November 15, 2023


Like all of us, Brereton was a product of his time. He was unaware of the carcinogenic nature of tobacco, for instance.

Most problematically, he suggests that Brits will never embrace opium smoking for sociocultural reasons. It's a Chinese thing. And that's certainly going to be true if the drug is demonized and prohibited, but in a free world it is common sense that such use would be attractive to many writers, poets and musicians, seeking inspiration. Although materialist prohibitionists scoff at the idea that opium can provide inspiration, it did, of course, lead to the writing of the poem Kubla Khan. And author Richard Middleton wrote in the 19th century that poets of his time smoked opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses.2" In other words, they smoked opium wisely and for admirable motives as well. And, of course, HP Lovecraft would not be HP Lovecraft without opium. His tales are full of opiate imagery.

"The spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams." -- Celaphais


But because folks like Coleridge blamed their own moral weakness on opium, the drug has been demonized. It's as if we had outlawed horseback riding because the first well-known horse rider in England had been thrown from his horse.

Author's Follow-up: May 15, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


Before the reader has a coronary, they might consider the fact that 1 in 4 American women take a Big Pharma med(s) every day of their life. Opium is easier to kick than some of those drugs, like Effexor.3 It's also interesting to point out that Drug Warriors refused to let Americans smoke opium peaceably at home, and now prohibitionists are complaining that opiate users are in the street!

Opium






Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal in the United States. It took drug laws to accomplish that. By outlawing opium and refusing to teach safe use, the drug warrior has subjected users to contaminated product of uncertain dosage, thereby causing thousands of unnecessary overdoses.

Currently, I myself am chemically dependent on a Big Pharma drug for depression, that I have to take every day of my life. There is no rational reason why I should not be able to smoke opium daily instead. It is only drug-war fearmongering that has demonized that choice -- for obvious racist, economic and political reasons.

You have been lied to your entire life about opium. In fact, the drug war has done its best to excise the very word "opium" from the English vocabulary. That's why the Thomas Jefferson Foundation refuses to talk about the 1987 raid on Monticello in which Reagan's DEA confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. It's just plain impolite to bring up that subject these days.

It's hard to learn the truth about opium because the few books on the subject demonize it rather than discuss it dispassionately. Take the book by John Halpern: "Opium: How an ancient flower shaped and poisoned our world." It's a typical Drug Warrior title. A flower did not poison our world, John: our world was poisoned by bad laws: laws that were inspired first and foremost by racism, followed closely by commercial interests, politics, misinformation and lies.

To learn something approaching to "the truth about Opium," read the book of that name by William Brereton, written to defend the time-honored panacea from the uninformed and libelous attacks of Christian missionaries.


  • In Defense of Opium
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Medications for so-called 'opioid-use disorder' are legion
  • Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff
  • Opium for the Masses by Jim Hogshire
  • Re-Legalize Opium Now
  • Smart Uses for Opium and Coca
  • The Drug War Cure for Covid
  • The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton
  • Why doctors should prescribe opium for depression




  • Notes:

    1 Weil, Andrew, From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs, Open Road Integrated Media, New York, 2004 (up)
    2 "He took life as young poets take opium: in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses." --'The Last Adventure' by Richard Middleton (up)
    3 Miller, Richard Lawrence, Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State, Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 1966 (up)



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    You have been reading an article entitled, The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton: Refutation of the fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade, published on September 3, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)