The Opium Danger at Home

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 8, 1908

The Opium Danger at Home

THE curse of opium is not restricted to China. That country has entered upon as energetic a war of extermination against opium as New England has against the gipsy-moth; but the United States is coming to face the same problem that has confronted China for so many years. There is no question but what opium dissipation in the United States was of Chinese origin; but the Chinese population in this country has not greatly increased since 1878, and yet the importation of that drug has increased in that time more than two hundred fifty per cent. In 1907 there were imported into the United States one hundred fifty-seven thousand pounds of opium, according to the report of the American commissioners appointed to investigate the growth of the opium habit; and this increase in opium importations has continued in spite of the fact that the Chinese are striving to give up the habit, and and the young Chinese are being systematically taught its dangerous and destructive character. The fact of the matter is that a great many white persons are taking up the use of the drug. There are said to be no less than three thousand white smokers in New York City alone. San Francisco also has its great corps of white opium-smokers, and other large cities furnish their quota. The press report of this matter closes with these words:—

What surprises Dr. Wright most is that it is not among the slums, but in the professional classes, where the highly keyed nervous systems seem to crave narcotics, that the habit is most in evidence. Many reports indicate that the “strenuous life” is, in a measure, responsible for recourse to the drug.

The “strenuous life” has come to be a characteristic of our times. It is but another way of designating the conditions foretold in James 5: 1-6. The craving for riches induces the strenuousness, and the strenuousness the desire for the effect which the drug produces.