ABSTRACT
Never before 1900 did the government accept the argument of reformers that the opium trade had to end. As late as 1895 a royal commission approved the continuation of the Indian trade with China.
But by the end of the 1800s attitudes toward the use of opium were changing. Doctors began to abandon it and home use declined as working-class living standards improved. The increasingly professional medical community discovered the potential for addiction to a derivative, morphine, which they had begun injecting with hypodermics. Crusaders against the Indian trade with China condemned opium as immoral and popular fiction played on racist sentiments by portraying opium smoking among the small Chinese community in the East End of London as an evil influence. For a combination of reasons, the habitual use of opium began to be considered a social evil, and a movement to control access to the drug began before 1900, but was not accomplished until the twentieth century.
