Importation of opium peaked in 1879 at 6,700 tons, and by 1906, China was producing 85 percent of the world's opium, some 35,000 tons, and 27 percent of its adult male population regularly used opium‍—‌13. In the 1660s, laudanum was recommended for pain, sleeplessness, and diarrhea by Thomas Sydenham, [31] the renowned "father of English medicine" or "English Hippocrates", to whom is attributed the quote, "Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium. According to the DEA, most black-market fentanyl in the United States is illegally manufactured, mostly in China, rather than stolen from the pharmaceutical industry. During the Qing dynasty, China opened itself to foreign trade under the Canton System through the port of Guangzhou (Canton), with traders from the East India Company visiting the port by the 1690s. Suppression" officials talked openly of their duty to realize more opium revenue for the government.

In Egypt, the use of opium was generally restricted to priests, magicians, and warriors, its invention is credited to Thoth, and it was said to have been given by Isis to Ra as treatment for a headache. By 1858 annual imports had risen to 70,000 chests (4,480 long tons (4,550t)), approximately equivalent to global production of opium for the decade surrounding the year 2000. Opium farming also increased, peaking in 1930 when the League of Nations singled China out as the primary source of illicit opium in East and Southeast Asia.Coleridge began using opium in 1791 after developing jaundice and rheumatic fever, and became a full addict after a severe attack of the disease in 1801, requiring 80–100 drops of laudanum daily. Opium fuses classic Chinese dim sum and other dishes with a contemporary London twist, adding new additions to older staples. This opium was then transported to the Chinese coast aboard British ships, where it was sold to native merchants who would sell it in China.

The British queen Victoria, not willing to replace the cheap opium with costly silver, began the First Opium War in 1840, the British winning Hong Kong and trade concessions in the first of a series of Unequal Treaties.

Faced with the problem that many Chinese associated Christianity with opium, partly due to the arrival of early Protestant missionaries on opium clippers, at the 1890 Shanghai Missionary Conference, they agreed to establish the Permanent Committee for the Promotion of Anti-Opium Societies in an attempt to overcome this problem and to arouse public opinion against the opium trade. Ottoman and European testimonies confirm that from the 16th to the 19th centuries Anatolian opium was eaten in Constantinople as much as it was exported to Europe.

By 1100 BCE, opium was cultivated on Cyprus, where surgical-quality knives were used to score the poppy pods, and opium was cultivated, traded, and smoked. Opium was also mentioned after the Persian conquest of Assyria and Babylonian lands in the 6th century BC. Lee S, Park Y, Han E, Choi H, Chung H, Oh SM, Chung KH: Thebaine in hair as a marker for chronic use of illegal opium poppy substances. North Carolina has a mandatory minimum sentence of 225 months, or almost 19 years, in prison for trafficking more than 28 grams (about 1 ounce) of heroin. The EIC opium processed in Patna and Benares was supplemented in the 1820s with opium from Malwa in the non-British controlled part of India.Julie Peakman’s books include Amatory Pleasures: Explorations in Eighteenth-Century Sexual Culture (Bloomsbury, 2016). The renowned Andalusian ophthalmologic surgeon Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi ("Abulcasis", 936–1013 CE) relied on opium and mandrake as surgical anesthetics and wrote a treatise, al-Tasrif, that influenced medical thought well into the 16th century. Opium is mentioned in the most important medical texts of the ancient and medieval world, including the Ebers Papyrus and the writings of Dioscorides, Galen, and Avicenna.