Physicians believe that opium had finally been perfected and tamed. Morphine is lauded as "God's own medicine" for its reliability, long-lasting effects and safety.

Jardine-Matheson & Company of London inherit India and its opium from the British East India Company once the mandate to rule and dictate the trade policies of British India are no longer in effect.

In San Francisco, smoking opium in the city limits is banned and is confined to neighboring Chinatowns and their opium dens.

Tabloids owned by William Randolph Hearst publish stories of white women being seduced by Chinese men and their opium to invoke fear of the 'Yellow Peril', disguised as an "anti-drug" campaign.

U.S. Congress passes the Pure Food and Drug Act requiring contents labeling on patent medicines by pharmaceutical companies. As a result, the availability of opiates and opiate consumers significantly declines.

The single largest heroin seizure is made in Bangkok. The U.S. suspects that the 2,400-pound shipment of heroin, en route to New York City, originated from the Golden Triangle region, controlled by drug warlord, Khun Sa.

October 2007

Death of Golden Triangle opium lord and former Shan separatist leader Khun Sa (1933-2007). At its peak, Khun Sa's narcotics empire controlled production of an estimated quarter of the world's heroin supply.

March 2008

A report by The Pew Centre, a Washington think tank, reveals that over one in 100 adults in the USA is now in jail: some 2,300,000 prisoners, triple the rate in the 1980s. American prisons now hold around a quarter of the world's inmates. Nearly half of US federal prisoners are imprisoned for non-violent, drug-related "crimes". Law professor Paul Cassell of the University of Utah comments on the size of the US prison population: "it's the price of living in the most free society in the world.”