In 1886, a federal judge in Oregon upheld a Chinese man's conviction under a state law banning the sale of opium for nonmedical use. "Smoking opium is not our vice," U.S. District Judge Matthew ...

A journey through opium’s history In Smoke and Ashes, Amitav Ghosh, acclaimed author and litterateur, takes readers on a ...

A riveting new history of opium, a lucrative and destructive flower. Amitav Ghosh’s sweeping, forcefully written ‘Smoke and Ashes’ covers centuries in the life of the plant ...

Authorities incinerate vast quantities of opium, heroin, methamphetamine, and other narcotics in major cities to mark ...

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It was in Javanese ports that Chinese sailors learned the habit of smoking tobacco dipped in Dutch-made liquid opium. They brought the practice back to Chinese port cities, where opium dens ...

A young man was pacing up and down the lobby of the Fifth-Avenue Hotel the other evening. His appearance was striking. He was faultlessly dressed in a pepper-and-salt suit of light weight, but his ...

Smoking opium wasn’t technically illegal at the time, so Curran and Neilson were charged with attempting to defraud the government out of tax revenue, according to the Bottineau Courant.

In his Opium-Smoking in America and China (New York, 1882), Harry Hubbell Kane described an "opium den" in which stood "a pleasant-faced Chinaman who, with scales in hand, was weighing out some opium.

Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories Amitav Ghosh. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $32 (416p) ISBN 978-0-374-60292-5 ...

In 'Smoke and Ashes,' Amitav Ghosh draws comparisons between America's modern opioid crisis and the West's flooding of China with opium in the 18th century.