Today, there are few living witnesses to the devastating effects of smoking opium, the resin of the same poppy plants from which heroin is derived. In the early 1950s, newly communist China took ...

From articles in Vanity Fair and Arena to documentaries on Japanese television, opium smoking has become chic. It is the drug of choice for a few famous Paris fashion designers and restaurateurs.

San Francisco's ordinance applied only to opium smoking, not to oral consumption of the same drug, which had long been widely available in over-the-counter patent medicines.

The fall of the god of money : opium smoking in nineteenth-century China / Keith McMahon Smithsonian Libraries and Archives ...

Which is pretty interesting, since the U.S. Congress banned opium smoking in 1909.

Open the door to Islam Beg's house and the thick opium smoke rushes out into the cold mountain air, like steam from a bathhouse. It's just past 8 a.m. and the family of six -- including a 1-year ...

Background: In Iran, there are an estimated 200,000 injecting drug users (IDUs). Injecting drug use is a relatively new phenomenon for this country, where opium smoking was the predominant form of ...