DISTILLED FROM THE JUICE OF POPPY SEEDS grown in South and Southeast Asia, the narcotic opium has had an enormous impact, which continues even today, on the economic and societal conditions of the countries that make up the Pacific Rim. Opium became an object of international trade very early on, but in the 18th and 19th centuries, with perhaps the exclusion of Japan, the rampant use of the highly addictive drug threatened to destroy the psyche and social fabric of entire nations and civilizations.
Read on »
