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A top hat with poppies and the words "Merchants of Addiction", and pictures of wealthy American opium smugglers.

The Blue-Blood Families That Made Fortunes in the Opium Trade

Long before the Sacklers appeared on the scene, families like the Astors and the Delanos cemented their upper-crust status through the global trade in opium.
by Amitav Ghosh via The Nation on January 23, 2024
Vintage drawing of a Victorian-era drugstore

Was Edgar Allan Poe a Habitual Opium User?

While Poe was likely using opium, the efforts to keep him quiet suggest that he was also drinking.
by Elizabeth Kelly Gray via Commonplace on February 7, 2022

How Profits From Opium Shaped 19th-Century Boston

In a city steeped in history, very few residents understand the powerful legacy of opium money.
by Martha Bebinger via WBUR on July 31, 2017

The Forgotten Drug Trips of the Nineteenth Century

Long before the hippies, a group of thinkers used substances like cocaine, hashish, and nitrous oxide to uncover the secrets of the mind.
by Claire Bucknell via The New Yorker on April 17, 2023
Picture of The Pekin Noodle Parlor, America's first Chinese restaurant.

The First Chinese Restaurant in America Has a Savory—and Unsavory—History

Venture into the Montana eatery, once a gambling den and opium repository, that still draws a crowd.
by Richard Grant, Sonya Maynard via Smithsonian on August 23, 2022
Barbed wire with an American flag hanging on it

For Two Decades, Americans Told One Lie After Another About What They Were Doing in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan was nasty and brutish, marked by the same imperial arrogance that doomed U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
by James Risen via The Intercept on August 26, 2021
A worker removes the Sackler name from a building at Tufts University in 2019.

The Problem of Pain

It’s easier to blame individuals for the opioid crisis than to attempt to diagnose and cure the ills of a society.
by Sophie Pinkham via Dissent on April 5, 2021
a rolled dollar bill and cocaine on a table

How America Convinced the World to Demonize Drugs

Much of the world used to treat drug addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one. And then America got its way.
by J. S. Rafaeli via Vice on August 13, 2018

Inside the Story of America’s 19th-Century Opiate Addiction

Doctors then, as now, overprescribed the painkiller to patients in need, and then, as now, government policy had a distinct bias.
by Erick Trickey via Smithsonian on January 4, 2018
Convalescing Civil War soldiers with crutches

The Post-Civil War Opioid Crisis

Many servicemen became addicted to opioids prescribed during the war. Society viewed their dependency as a lack of manliness.
by Jonathan S. Jones, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on July 9, 2023
Photo of a young Chinese worker carrying tea.

Inside the Diet That Fueled Chinese Transcontinental Railroad Workers

Denied the free meals of their Irish counterparts, Chinese laborers learned to thrive on their own.
by Shoshi Parks via Atlas Obscura on November 30, 2022
Photos of Civil War veterans showing injuries and amputations.

America’s First Opioid Crisis Grew Out Of the Carnage Of The Civil War

Tens of thousands of sick and injured soldiers became addicted.
by Michael E. Ruane via Retropolis on December 1, 2021
Collage of Stephen Crane with Civil War scenes

The Miracle of Stephen Crane

Born after the Civil War, he turned himself into its most powerful witness—and modernized the American novel.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on October 18, 2021
Richard Nixon speaking to the press in 1971

New Documents Reveal the Bloody Origins of America's Long War On Drugs

When President Nixon launched the war on drugs in 1971, it set off a bloody chain reaction in Mexico as new documents reveal.
by Benjamin T. Smith via TIME on August 24, 2021
Gold-spangled Polish chickens.

Fancy Fowl

How an evil sea captain and a beloved queen made the world crave KFC.
by Ben Marks via Collectors Weekly on June 3, 2021
DR. JOHN J. CRAVEN, MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH AND THE PHYSICIAN WHO LATER ATTENDED JEFFERSON DAVIS, PERFORMS AN OPERATION DURING THE 1863 SIEGE OF CHARLESTON. THE DOCTOR APPEARS TO BE APPLYING A SPLINT TO THE LEG OF A PATIENT WHILE A MAN BEHIND HIM SEEMS TO BE HOLDING A WHITE COTTON CLOTH, LIKELY SOAKED IN CHLOROFORM, OVER THE PATIENT'S MOUTH AND FACE. | LOCATION: MORRIS ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. (PHOTO BY CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES)

America Has Been Through An Opioid Crisis Before

America’s first opioid crisis came after its bloodiest war, but the lessons of the original debacle have been lost in history.
by Jonathan S. Jones via Vice on April 9, 2021
Soldiers carrying a wounded soldier to a helicopter for evacuation.

Confidential Documents Reveal U.S. Officials Failed to Tell the Truth About the War in Afghanistan

For nearly two decades, US leaders have sounded a constant refrain: We're making progress in Afghanistan. They weren't, documents show, and they knew it.
by Craig Whitlock via Washington Post on December 9, 2019
Ann Lohman – also known as Madame Restell – in an 1847 edition of the National Police Gazette.

“Immoderate Menses” or Abortion? Bodily Knowledge and Illicit Intimacy in an 1851 Divorce Trial

Edwin Forrest’s 1851 divorce trial.
by Sara Lampert via Nursing Clio on September 23, 2019

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