In partnership with The Conversation, Trending brings you a series on drug regimes in southern Africa. This piece by Thembisa Waetjen offers a short history of South Africa and Mozambique’s entanglement with opium.
By the early 1900s, opium was a common ingredient in over-the-counter patent medicines that were distributed by shopkeepers, pharmacists and missionaries. Pictures: iStockbrings you a series of articles on drug regimes in southern Africa. They are based on research done for a special edition for the South African Historical Journal, and showcase research about some of the ‘secret’ histories of drugs from the southern region of Africa.
With a focus on Mozambique and South Africa, I demonstrate how the changing global politics of drug supply and suppression influenced local colonial social and political processes. I also show how these histories influenced events worldwide, including the first efforts to use the League of Nations to control the international cannabis trade.
As people learnt of the power of opium, which is derived from a strain of the poppy plant, demand for it increasedBy the early 1900s, the consumption of opium and its alkaloids, like morphine, were well established in southern Africa. A common ingredient in over-the-counter patent medicines, opiates were distributed by shopkeepers, pharmacists and missionaries. Because of disproportionate access, white citizens were most at risk of forming a “habit”.
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