Eleven minutes5/10/2023 ![]() ![]() Instead, it rendered its users emotionally and physiologically empty, disrupting fertility, family stability, productivity and almost every aspect of life for generations. It was smoked through a pipe and, unlike today’s opioid drugs (morphine, heroin, hydrocodone, and fentanyl), rarely fatal. Once it was distilled, dried and formed into balls, it was compact, stable and easily transported. ![]() Opium, as it was traded at the time, was made from the sap of a certain type of poppy. Photography by Mel TaingĪs heart-wrenching as this crisis is, it pales in comparison to the millions of lives in China and South Asia that were devastated by illegal opium in the 18th and 19th centuries. To put that number in perspective, it’s another life lost-someone’s mother or brother or partner or best friend-every eleven minutes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 47,000 people died from opioid-related overdoses in the United States in 2017. ![]()
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