19 Facts About Opium

Opium is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy Papaver somniferum.

Opium is mentioned in the most important medical texts of the ancient world, including the Ebers Papyrus and the writings of Dioscorides, Galen, and Avicenna.

Opium was used with poison hemlock to put people quickly and painlessly to death.

Opium was traded from Egypt by the Phoenicians and Minoans to destinations around the Mediterranean Sea, including Greece, Carthage, and Europe.

Opium was mentioned after the Persian conquest of Assyria and Babylonian lands in the 6th century BC.

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Opium is said to have been used for recreational purposes from the 14th century onwards in Muslim societies.

Opium described an expedition sent by the Ming dynasty Chenghua Emperor in 1483 to procure opium for a price "equal to that of gold" in Hainan, Fujian, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Shaanxi, where it is close to the western lands of Xiyu.

Opium smoking began as a privilege of the elite and remained a great luxury into the early 19th century.

Opium was banned completely in 1799, and this prohibition continued until 1860.

Opium smuggling provided 15 to 20 percent of the British Empire's revenue and simultaneously caused scarcity of silver in China.

Opium trade incurred intense enmity from the later British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.

Opium lobbied the British Parliament to stop the opium trade.

Opium farming increased, peaking in 1930 when the League of Nations singled China out as the primary source of illicit opium in East and Southeast Asia.

In 1909, the International Opium Commission was founded, and by 1914, 34 nations had agreed that the production and importation of opium should be diminished.

Opium-producing nations are required 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 was prohibited in many countries during the early 20th century, leading to the modern pattern of opium production as a precursor for illegal recreational drugs or tightly regulated, highly taxed, legal prescription drugs.

Opium poppies are popular and attractive garden plants, whose flowers vary greatly in color, size and form.

Opium extract finally can be made by macerating raw opium with water.

Opium production has led to rising tensions in Afghan villages.