Opium’s Growing Ruin in China

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 13, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 11.

Opium’s Growing Ruin in China

Within the last few years the annual production of native opium in China is said to have increased from 100,000 to 300,000 chests, and it is stated that in some provinces as many as sixty out of one hundred of the whole population are opium-smokers. Hitherto, complaint has been made chiefly against the importation of foreign opium. But the cultivation of the poppy has spread rapidly over extensive districts, and it is now said that three times as much is produced as is imported. If the use of the drug, and the cultivation of the plant which yields it, shall increase for a generation as during recent years, that whole populous country will be on the highway to ruin from this vice alone.