Opium Use In Nantucket 1792

Opium use in Nantucket 1792.

Do anyone know of any scholarly discussion of the following statement by Crevecoeur on women’s use of opium in Nantucket (from Letters from an American Farmer of 1782)or, for that matter, on drugs generally in early America?

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Stone, ed., Letters, p. 160: “A singular custom prevails here among the women, at which I was greatly surprised and am really at a loss how to account for the original cause that has introduced in this primitive society so remarkable a fashion, or rather so extraordinary a want. They have adopted these many years the Asiatic custom of taking a dose of opium every morning, and so deeply rooted is it that they would be at a loss how to live without this indulgence; they would rather be deprived of any necessary than forego their favorite luxury. This is much more prevailing among the women than the men, few of the latter having caught the contagion, though the sheriff, whom I may call the first person in the island, who is an eminent physician beside and whom I had the pleasure of being well acquainted with, has for many years submitted to this custom. He takes three grains of it every day after breakfast, with the effects of which, he often told me, he was not able to transact any business. It is hard to conceive how a people always happy and healthy, in consequence of the exercise and labour they undergo, never oppressed with the vapours of idleness, yet should want the fictitious effects of opium to preserve that cheerfulness to which their temperance, their climate, their happy situation, so justly entitle them. But where is the society perfectly free from error or folly; the least imperfect is undoubtedly that where the greatest good preponderates; and agreeable to this rule, I can truly say, that I never was acquainted with a less vicious or more harmless one.”

Evidently Thomas Jefferson was another of those Drug criminals.

Thomas Jefferson was a drug criminal. But he managed to escape the terrible sword of justice by dying a century before the DEA was created. In 1987 agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency showed up at Monticello, Jefferson’s famous estate.

Jefferson had planted opium poppies in his medicinal garden, and opium poppies are now deemed illegal. Now, the trouble was the folks at the Monticello Foundation, which preserves and maintains the historic site, were discovered flagrantly continuing Jefferson’s crimes. The agents were blunt: The poppies had to be immediately uprooted and destroyed or else they were going to start making arrests, and Monticello Foundation personnel would perhaps face lengthy stretches in prison.

The story sounds stupid now, but it scared the hell out of the people at Monticello, who immediately started yanking the forbidden plants. A DEA man noticed the store was selling packets of “Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Poppies.” The seeds had to go, too. While poppy seeds might be legal, it is never legal to plant them. Not for any reason.

Thank The Maker America is now safe from Drugs. Well legal ones anyway. It does appear though that we are unsafe from criminals and criminal drugs. Opiates have been illegal in America since December of 1914. I do believe that another hundred years or so of opiate prohibition will solve the problem. A little modified yeast, some sugar, nutrients, and water and in a few hours you will have a supply of any drug you want. Talk about growing your own.