The Opium War of 1840 opened a century of humiliation in modern China, the British used war to prevent the Qing Dynasty from saving itself from smoking, and in the following hundred years, opium plagued countless Chinese, and a huge amount of wealth was plundered, leaving only a decadent and decadent country.
In fact, the Qing Dynasty had already issued a smoking ban as early as the Yongzheng Period:
"Whoever sells opium and tobacco, in accordance with the example of buying prohibited goods, sends people to the border to charge the army in January, privately opens opium smoke houses to lure the children of good families, and according to the cult to confuse the people, intends to hang and wait; for the sake of obedience, the staff is one hundred, and the flow is three thousand miles; the boatmen, the local security guards, the neighbors, etc., have a staff of one hundred and serve for three years; the military servants and so on borrow money to ask for money, count the stolen goods, and punish the crime according to the law; and the civil and military officials in the local civil and military departments of the flood mouth who have neglected to observe the flood, and do not exercise customs supervision, are all handed over to the Ministry for strict deliberation."
Later, Qianlong Jiaqing also promulgated relevant laws one after another, and the qing dynasty high-level had already discovered the harm of opium smoke a long time ago, which was easy to addictive and also destroyed the human body.
However, at that time, the smuggling of Guangzhou Thirteen Lines, the only foreign trade port of the Qing Dynasty, was very serious, and foreign opium dealers and corrupt officials at home colluded with each other to open the way with silver, and the bribe money was not worth mentioning at all with the huge profits brought by smuggling opium.
After that, the number of opium smuggling soared, the Qing Dynasty during the Jiaqing period was also in turmoil, and the ban on smoking naturally did not make the imperial court pay enough attention, and by the time Daoguang succeeded to the throne, opium was already rampant in the Qing Dynasty.
Daoguang naturally also knew that as soon as he came to power, he almost every year strengthened the measures of smoking bans, promulgating various anti-smoking decrees; Daoguang three years, promulgated the "Regulations on Neglecting Opium"; Daoguang promulgated the "Regulations on Banning Opium In eleven years;Daoguang eighteen years, he again promulgated the "Regulations on strictly prohibiting opium smoke in King", which compiled the regulations on the prohibition of trafficking, smoking, and prohibition of seeds issued by the Qing court into 39 articles, becoming the first comprehensive "anti-drug code" in China's history.
In the eleventh year of Daoguang, Daoguang conducted a collective study on opium, and local officials continued to show their anti-smoking attitude and propose specific methods, and then gradually upgraded from the original anti-smoking edict to a anti-smoking charter. This formed the first anti-smoking climax in the early years of Daoguang, and the imperial court made great efforts to rectify opium smuggling this time.
Although laws were promulgated one after another, the officials at the bottom had long been decayed, the emperor was far away, and the amount of opium smuggling was not only not curbed, but intensified year by year.
By the fifteenth year of Daoguang, there were more than 2 million people in the country. In the eighteenth year of Daoguang, Huang Juezi, the secretary of the Hongxu Temple, gave a "no smoking ban" to the imperial court, seriously expounding the harm of opium and telling Daoguang the fact that opium was rampant with a large amount of data. Daoguang was very sure of Huang Juezi's performance, and handed it over to the group of ministers for discussion, and finally a more comprehensive and scientific smoking ban was introduced.
Subsequently, the Jingshi began to crack down hard, and at the same time, a large number of addicted relatives of the Imperial Family and the Eight Banners were also dealt with, and the problem of the opium flood in the Jingshi was curbed, but in other places, the smuggling of opium was still rampant.
At this moment, the Qing court's attitude toward opium smuggling was also divided into two factions, namely, the strict prohibition faction represented by Lin Zexu and the relaxed forbidden faction represented by Xu Naiji, the former advocating an immediate ban, and the latter advocating a slow ban through policies.
Although Qi Shan of the Chi Ban Faction had expected that a strict ban on opium might lead to coastal harassment by foreigners, the Chi Ban Faction could never come up with specific implementation measures. On the other hand, Lin Zexu's faction had a detailed plan, a rigorous logic, and a specific course of action, plus Daoguang himself wanted to make a difference, and his heart was also towards the side of the strict prohibition faction.
Therefore, from June 3 to June 25, 1839, the imperial court sent Lin Zexu to Guangzhou, and the famous anti-drug operation humen tobacco sales in history have since entered the annals of history.
After that, everyone knows that the British used this as an excuse to launch the Opium War, followed by the second Opium War, the invasion of China by the Eight-Power Alliance and a series of invasions, and the Qing Dynasty signed a large number of unequal treaties, and opium has been unimpeded since then.
However, the Qing Dynasty never gave up smoking bans, and in the end, the thinking of the Qing Dynasty also changed, and it joined the idea of not being able to fight, and the Qing Dynasty itself began to grow opium.
Because soon after the "Humen tobacco sales", a large amount of opium continued to be dumped into the country, and seeing that there was no hope of a complete ban on smoking, some ministers even put forward the idea of boycotting foreign opium with domestic opium, hoping to stop the outflow of silver.
In the ninth year of Xianfeng (1859 AD), the Qing court officially promulgated the "Regulations on the Collection of Local Medicine Taxes" to collect opium. This regulation directly affects not only increasing taxes, but also directly affirming the legitimacy of opium (poppy) cultivation and trade. In this way, in just five years, poppy fields have sprung up like mushrooms in various places, and Shanxi has become a major opium-growing province.
At the beginning, the quality of domestic opium was very poor, it was not comparable to British opium at all, this is the sadness of backwardness, even drug trafficking is not as good as others, but slowly, the quality of domestic opium has improved, seizing a large number of British opium markets, and opium has begun to flood the country.
The British slowly found that something was wrong, their opium in China has been completely unable to sell, at that time the second largest opium dealer in the United States also found such a situation, so the export to domestic sales, the United States opium began to mix in the United States, the drug culture born of this has influenced the United States so far.
After the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War, people of insight in the Qing Dynasty appealed that the prohibition of opium could not be postponed, and the Guangxu Emperor, who hoped to make a difference, also had this intention, and on September 20, 1906, the Guangxu Emperor issued an edict declaring a strict ban on smoking, because the Chinese market had been completely occupied by local opium, and foreign opium was almost completely driven out.
This time, the effect of smoking bans is much better, without the disturbances of foreigners, when facing its own people, the Qing Dynasty still showed a strong wrist ability.
In just 5 years, the whole country has received remarkable results in banning seeds, banning sales, banning trafficking, and banning smoking, and later set up a special anti-smoking minister to combat opium throughout the country.
Since then, the Qing Dynasty has also actively carried out international cooperation.
On February 1, 1909, a meeting of the International Opium Commission was held at the Bund Huizhong Hotel (now the South Building of the Peace Hotel) in Shanghai, China, known in history as the "Anti-Smoking Society of All Nations". 41 delegates from 13 countries, including China, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, Siam (present-day Thailand) and Persia (present-day Iran), gathered to discuss anti-smoking plans. ——Baidu Encyclopedia
This is the first international conference on drug control in human history, proposed by US President Theodore Roosevelt, after years of consultation, in 1912, the world's first drug control convention "Hague Opium Convention" was born, which is a milestone in the history of international drug control.
As the largest opium dealer, the United Kingdom also participated in it, on the one hand, its own domestic opium flood, on the other hand, the opium grown in India has been completely driven out of the Chinese market, and now it is selling opium, in addition to making a stink of its own reputation, nothing can be fished, and the United Kingdom was also in transition at that time, the advent of the industrial age, the cultivation of opium has not made money, it is better to ban opium along the water, everyone else should not plant.
It is worth mentioning that as early as before the start of the Anti-Drug Conference of all nations, Britain and the Qing Dynasty signed the "Sino-British Anti-Smoking Treaty", Britain promised to reduce the trade in opium year by year, and China also increased the tariff of opium year by year, and British opium slowly withdrew from the Chinese market, finally, before the qing Dynasty perished, it still banned British opium, and the reason for the humiliation of modern history began, the Qing Dynasty spent almost half a century to finally drive out British opium.
The Republic of China was established
Unfortunately, although the Qing Dynasty vigorously rectified opium in the last few years, opium has long become an important financial pillar of the provinces, local officials can not let go of this golden bag, after the Qing Dynasty collapsed, the warlords of the Republic of China were in a scuffle, fighting a war needs money, the warlords are even more unlikely to ban smoking, although the British opium was driven away, but China's opium is still rampant, opium is grown almost everywhere in the country, the real opium is completely eradicated from the land of China, it is already the time of the founding of New China, the scourge of China's opium for a hundred years. Since then, it has officially withdrawn from the stage of history.