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By 1750, the British East India Company had taken control of several opium-growing regions of India, and by the 1790s had developed a monopoly on the opium trade. China’s new emperor, Kia King, then banned opium completely. This failed to stop the British East India Company from increasing their smuggling and sale of opium in China, which grew from 15 tons a year in the earlier 1700s to 3,200 tons a year by 1850.6 American University Professor Clarence Lusane argued that once Britain had developed its empire, it used opium as an important new political tool for conquest. The British, he wrote, used opium to help addict and control the Chinese people en masse, increasing British profits in China and
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John L. Potash (Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA's Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac, and Other Activists)