The Opium Wars

The Opium war was the worlds very first drug war. Opium is a drug made from poppy seedpods. It was produced in the East Indes and shipped to China by the British merchants. Opium is used to make other drugs such as Heroin, Morphine, Codein and Mescalun. At one time, opium was used as medicine to treat diseases. When the chinese were introduced to mixing opium with tobacco, they began to smoke it. This drug was so powerful that the chinese became badly addicted to it.
After a while, the British merchants didnt have anything to sell to China. China was a self-sufficient country so everything that they needed, they alredy had. In order to keep the tea trade flowing, the British merchants imported opium mixed with tobacco to china. This promoted opium smoking. Many of the chinese smoked this drug and as a result, the chinese population decreased. When the chinese government became aware of the drug, they tried to put an end to it. There were policies against selling opium to smoke. opium smoking houses were banned and shut down. Anyone who sold opium to smoke was either banished or killed. eventhough there were policies against opium, the British still kept selling it to china. Because some of the government officials were greedy, they became part of the illegal opium trade.
Some time had passed and the chinese really became serious about the sale of opium. In more ways than one, they tried to get the British to stop selling opium to China. They wouldnt listen.

an anti-opium campaign was started. Great Britain demanded that the Chinese ended the campaign but they didn't so the Britain's attacked the Chinese. They Chinese were caught by surprise by this attack. Because the Britain's had advanced technology, they won the Opium war.