IN XANADU

A study of opium and the effects it has had on mankind for good and ill

a review of:

OPIUM A History. By Martin Booth. 381 pp. New York: St. Martin's Press. $24.95.

ONE minor offshoot of the 18thcentury passion for enlightenment was the
awarding of medals and cash prizes for those who made discoveries that
would benefit the human race. There was no reason why opium, of which the
paindulling and euphoria-inducing properties had been known for
millenniums, should be exempt from this general trend. It was thus in the
spirit of the times, spurred on by the promise of a gold medal and 50
guineas in cash for the first Briton to produce 20 pounds of raw opium,
that in 1794 Thomas Jones planted five acres of his land near London with
opium poppies. In 1800, after many setbacks, his patience was rewarded: his
poppies yielded 21 pounds of raw opium, and Jones received the prize.
Twenty years later, an Edinburgh surgeon named John Young had raised
production to 56 pounds of opium an acre, as well as harvesting a handsome
crop of new potatoes, grown between the poppy rows to protect the young
stems from the harsh weather.

Between these two breakthroughs, a young German pharmacist's assistant in
Westphalia, F. W. A. Serturner, determined to find the roots of the power
of the poppy. After several years, he managed to isolate an alkaloid from
raw opium, which he termed "morphium." For many years he experimented on
himself to explore the effects of the alkaloid, which he noted spanned the
range from the therapeutic and the euphoric to the "terrible," and greatly
expanded the effects that had previously been available from opium eating
and smoking, or from the tincture of opium, laudanum.

Serturner also was awarded a cash prize and a citation, and news of his
discovery was widely disseminated, and built upon by other scientists. By
the time of the American Civil War, surgeons on both sides regularly
dispensed it to soldiers, and one would pour doses of morphine into his
gloved hands, allowing the troops to lick the drug as he rode past. Science
did not pause at the morphine stage for long. In 1874 a pharmacist in
London, searching for a nonaddictive alternative to morphine, boiled
morphine together with acetic anhydride, producing a substance with
immensely powerful narcotic properties. By 1898 a pharmacist at the Bayer
Laboratories in Germany noted the amazingly powerful effects of the
substance as a painkiller, and Bayer accordingly marketed it under the name
deemed suitable for a drug of such heroic qualities--- "heroin." The quest
for knowledge of these opium-based derivatives continues: in the 1960's, at
a laboratory in Edinburgh, a scientist stirred both his own and his
colleague's morning tea with a glass rod Iying handy nearby. Within a few
moments, the scientists were comatose on the floor. The rod had been used
to stir an opium derivative (later named "etorphine") some 10,000 times
stronger than morphine, and now used to tranquilize elephants and
rhinoceroses.

These details are just a minute sampling of the extraordinary barrage of
information that Martin Booth crams into his new study of opium and
opiates. As Booth observes, opium has always drawn mixed responses: it has
been praised by skilled physicians as "God's own medicine," and by those
using it to curb their pain as "like having one's soul rubbed down with
silk." Countless writers and performers have testified to its spell,
perhaps none more powerfully than Lenny Bruce, who stated that his
addiction was "like kissing God."

Yet across all four millenniums in which humans have used and recorded the
effects of opium (and more recently laudanum, morphine and heroin), the
terrible bondage and the hell of withdrawal have also been known and
discussed. Governments have been constantly torn and divided over how to
limit or control the uses of these powerful narcotics. Moralists have
grieved at the human and psychic waste. Criminal groups of all types from
virtually all nations have exploited the needs and weaknesses of the drug
takers, sharpening their wits against the various forces marshaled to
deflect or deter them. And finally, there are the rationalists; who observe
the phenomenon with neither affection nor outrage. Booth quotes the science
fiction writer Philip K. Dick as writing in the 70's: "Drug misuse is not a
disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a
moving car. You could call that not a disease but an error of judgment."

In some ways, that detached remark could be taken as typifying Booth's own
stance in "Opium: A History." He rarely judges the addict, nor does he
condemn the farmers who grow the opium poppies that set the entire process
in motion. And though he talks of the terrible scourge of opium, morphine
and heroin addiction and its costs ---he offers a rough estimate of
contemporary drug traffic as grossing $750 billion a year, and serving 40
to 50 million addicts worldwide --- he often seems more intrigued than
repelled by the ingenuity used by those who smuggle the drugs. Certainly
the many examples he gives underline the incredible difficulties faced by
the police and border agencies who try to shore up their domains against
the relentless flow: there is a kind of terrible fascination in this
endless war, in which couriers swallow condoms filled with heroin and
sealed with dental floss, waterproofed consignments of drugs are sunk in
the sea surrounded with packs of salt or sugar and bob to the surface when
the weights dissolve, or a pet cat is carried through customs surrounded by
her five dead kittens, which have been eviscerated and stuffed with drugs.

THE shape of Booth's book is sprawling, and sometimes unhelpful to the
reader. He gives no notes to his sources; many of the books he does mention
in his text are not included in his bibliography; and he constantly uses
passive verbal forms--- "it is believed," "it is suggested," "it is
rumored"---which give an aura of vagueness to many crucial points in his
presentation. But he has done a lot of exploring, and startling anecdotes
and personalities abound. Though it is not initially clear from the table
of contents, there is a kind of organizational progression to his work. The
first six chapters set the historical scene over time, explore the
scientific dimensions and consider the uses and preparations of opium in
different cultures, from the medicinal to the escapist and the allegedly
creative. The next three chapters focus largely on China. They tell the
story of the British and the Opium War, the role of opium in the growth of
Hong Kong's economy, its spread overseas through the Chinese coolie trade,
the Kuomintang's attempted monopoly of the opium trade in the 1930's and
the Japanese counteroffensive with narcotics in Manchuria and northern
China on the eve of World War II.

The last seven chapters explore the international criminal distribution of
opium in the recent era, concentrating on the activities of criminal
syndicates in a score or more countries and regions, from Chinese triads to
the French connection, from the Mafia to the Cali cartel. Booth gives
especially detailed attention to the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, and
the Golden Crescent linking Turkey, Iran and Pakistan to Afghanistan. But
he also explores the manifold opium and heroin distribution systems in
Western Europe and the United States, and in addition the curious reader
will find rich information on drug production and distribution in
Australia, the Balkans, Russia and Latin America.

Booth is fascinated by the extent to which the agonies of the drug world
have been brought on the Western countries by their own policies: just as
Britain used opium for its own international economic purposes in the l9th
century, so did the United States (through the C.l.A. and other agencies)
connive at or even foster drug dealing in its pursuit of allies against
Communism, first in Laos and Burma before and during the Vietnam War, and
then again in the Afghan insurgencies. Booth is detailed and compassionate
on the spread of addiction among United States service personnel in
Vietnam, and condemns the lack of adequate care available to addicts after
the war was over.

IT is a crowded, sad and dramatic story, often sordid, though at times not
without a certain bleak humor. What on earth can be done about it all? Very
little, seems to be Booth's answer, as long as people continue to take
drugs. The profits are gigantic, and the supply of growers and runners as
apparently endless as that of waiting customers. Technology serves both
sides equally, and the ingenuity expended on detection is matched by the
ingenuity spent on evasion. Decriminalization of drug use has not worked,
nor has legalization of production, nor has executing the growers and
couriers. Booth raises several major questions briefly at the conclusion of
his book: could alternative poppy strains be developed, or the scientific
study of neurotransmitters be increased, or chemical detection modes be
shifted to a higher stage? Should all civil rights and due process for
dealers be waived in the attempt to close out the drug trade?

In all these cases, there are contradictory arguments. Striking at both the
social factors that incline people to addiction and removing the profit
motives for the dealers would seem to be the most hopeful route to follow.
Yet we still do not understand what draws people to drugs in the first
place, and the profits are so huge that they boggle the mind. In a
startling table, drawn from the Department of Justiceis Drug Enforcement
Administration report of September 1993, Booth presents the basic economic
scenario: initial cost of raw opium as harvested by hand, from incised
poppy pods, in the Shan territories of Myanmar, $66-$75 per kilogram (2.2
pounds); one kilo of prepared morphine base on the Thai border,
$900-$1,000; one kilo of refined heroin in Bangkok, $6,000-$10,000;
wholesale refined heroin cost in the United States, $90,000-$250,000 per
kilo; adulterated street sale of cut heroin in the United States, if
calculated by the kilo, $940,000-$1,400,000. The person or government that
could change those ratios might be approaching a kind of solution. Until
then, in Booth's melancholy word, the problem seems"insoluble."

Jonathan Spence teaches the history of modern China at Yale. His latest
book, "The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds," will be
published later this year.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)