Harrison Narcotics Act

11 Pages 2783 Words

iticized for shipping opium grown in India into China; in fact, two nineteenth-century “opium wars” between Britain and China had been fought over the issue. Many Chinese regarded the opium from India as unfair cut-rate competition for their homegrown product. Some American missionaries in China complained that British opium was ruining the Chinese people; American traders simply complained that the silver bullion China was trading for British opium could better be traded for other, perhaps American products. (It is important to note that some American traders also sent opium into China on a smaller scale. Some of New England’s world renowned “China clippers” were in fact opium clippers.) The agitation against British opium sales to China continued unabated after 1900. Thus the United States State Department saw a way not only to solve the War Department’s Philippine opium problem, but also to please American missionaries and traders. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, at the request of Bishop Brent, called for an international o...