Chinese people enjoyed opium for centuries before the Opium wars. Opium was a legal and commonly traded item, and it was only since the 1790s that the imperial court started to worry about the effects of abuse.
And even ~1000 years before then, Wu Shi San was a popular, but toxic psychoactive drug used by the elite in China.
I can’t seriously believe that Chinese people didn’t abuse psychoactive substances before they discovered the joy of British opium
Chinese people enjoyed opium for centuries before the Opium wars. Opium was a legal and commonly traded item, and it was only since the 1790s that the imperial court started to worry about the effects of abuse.
And even ~1000 years before then, Wu Shi San was a popular, but toxic psychoactive drug used by the elite in China.
COPY - CES_WP136.pdf - https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/uploads/files/Working-Papers-Archives/CES_WP136.pdf
Cold-Food Powder - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-Food_Powder
Also Imperial Britain was a monarchy, not a free country. Brunacho’s comment makes zero sense.
To be fair just before the time of the opium wars they were relatively far along in their process of converting to a democracy.
A country with an unelected House of Lords is still not a free democracy.
The wackiest thing is that it’s often the Lords who have stopped the Commons enacting some really authoritarian stuff!