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The International Opium Commission proposed by the United States and accepted by Austria-Hungary, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Russia, and Siam convened at Shanghai on the 1st of last February, completed its study of the opium problem throughout the world, and based on that study, issued nine unanimous declarations. The Commission adjourned on February 27th.

Following the issue of the Philippines Report, and as the diplomatic correspondence proceeded, which led to the International Commission, action after action was taken by the interested governments to control or stamp out the misuse of opium. The Chinese government was prompt, and her leaders and people enthusiastic. January, 1906, saw four of her great viceroys publish a manifesto on the subject. Part of it ran: " As Great Britain is the friend of China, she will shortly be called to assist the Chinese government to stamp out the evil." The Chinese government prohibited, without qualification, the use of opium in the Imperial colleges and schools, and in the recently created army.

There is nothing that would please the writer more than to describe the international atmosphere in which the Opium Conference convened and proceeded to its deliberations and conclusions. That, however, must reside in memory for the present.

This conference, — the latest of the Hague Conferences to which the United States was a party, — was proposed by the United States on September 1, 1909, and convoked by the Netherlands Government on December 1, 1911. It dealt in a judicial manner with the varied and conflicting interests, diplomatic, moral, humanitarian and economic, of those governments represented and with the known similar interests of those not represented. Several of the governments in making pledges for the obliteration of the opium evil did so in the face of an eventual large financial sacrifice, but this was done thoughtfully and generously.The conference determined upon and on January 23rd last signed a convention for the suppression of the obnoxious features of their national and of the international opium, morphine and cocaine traffics, and for the regulation of that part of the production of and trade in the drugs which may be said to be legitimate. To China was confirmed much that she had contended for for a hundred years or more as to the vexatious export of Indian opium to her shores. This act, however, was but a broader recognition of what the British Government had, as between India and China, already yielded to China by virtue of the so-called Ten Year Agreement of 1907, and by the modification of that agreement signed at Peking on the 8th of May, 1911.

AbstractAn ambiguous image of opium prevailed before the 1890s. At that time, despite opponents who often warned of the physical and moral damage it caused, the drug was considered to have positive aspects. In particular, opium was an expression of wealth and a wonderful way to socialise, and its analgesic properties made it the equivalent of a panacea. But from the last decade of the nineteenth century onwards, anti-opium visual propaganda succeeded in imposing the cliché of the smoker as a skinny man dressed in rags. This way of representing smokers went far beyond the limits of specialised anti-opium posters and publications: it became, indeed, almost universal. The use of skinniness to portray opium smokers contributed to creating a system whereby the opium smoker was tagged as a destitute person, of a low social position. This successful 'deglamorisation' of opium drove more and more people to turn away from the use of the drug. It is a crucial factor in explaining why consumption was much less alarming in the 1920s and 1930s than it used to be in the late nineteenth century.

Opium, once used for ritual purposes, is a substance which dulls pain and offers access to an artificial world, and has long been idealized by artists and markets. Baudelaire, Picasso, and Dickens were all inspired to create by the blue clouds of smoke. Known as either a sacred drug or the worst of poisons, opium rapidly became popular in Great Britain and a source of commerce with Imperial China. This illustrated work presents the history and quasi-religious rites of opium's use.