From: [f--ca--t] at [paranoia.com] (Tommy Ranks)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,rec.drugs.misc,alt.drugs,alt.drugs.hard,alt.drugs.culture
Subject: Opium poem 1894
Date: 23 Jan 1996 06:21:23 GMT

This is a recent addition to my drug culture/history WWW page:
     http://www.paranoia.com/~foucault/Babel/
 It's a poem that comes from the turn of the century when Opium was 
criminalized, suddenly turning thousands of law-abiding citizens into 
criminals.
 (The point is: drugs have always been with us and will always be with us 
and making them illegal only gets people hurt.)

Opium Eater's Soliloquy
-----------------------

I'd been cheered up, at my chandoo-shop, for years at least two-score,
To perform my daily labour, and was never sick or sore,
     But they said this must not be;
     So they've passed a stern decree,
And they've made my chandoo-seller shut his hospitable door.

If I'd only cultivated, now, a taste for beer and gin,
Or had learnt at pool or baccarat my neighbour's coin to win,
     I could roam abroad o' nights,
     And indulge in these delights,
And my soul would not be stigmatized, as being steeped in sin.

But mine's a heathen weakness for a creature-comfort far
Less pernicious than their alcohol, more clean than their cigar,
     They have sent their howlings forth
     From their platform in the North,
And 'twixt me and my poor pleasure have opposed a righteous bar.

          -- Sir Patrick Hehir, M.D.
             London, 1894.

---
 Tommy Ranks -- [f--ca--t] at [paranoia.com] -- http://www.paranoia.com/~foucault