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==How Recent Trends Differed from the Past==
The trade in opium continued to increase throughout much of the 19th century, particularly from ChinaIndia. Opium was being exported to China from India, where it was also commercially grownby the British East India Company. This Chinese had banned opium by this point but the British East India Company began to trade illegally smuggle it to into China illegally through the port of Canton. This led to the Chinese government to confiscate the opium from Canton , but this led to conflict with Britain, launching which launched the so-called First Opium War that led to the take over of Hong Kong and other Chinese ports. Throughout the 19th century, opium was widely traded despite its ban in a few countries. In the West, it was legal and often used to derive various drugs such as morphine and heroin. It was only in 1912 that opium became banned under the International Opium Convention. Similarly, in the 1920s was an era where other drugs increasingly became banned, such as marijuana, as by then crime and heavy drug use became larger problems in Western countries.<ref>For more on a recent history of opium and its banning, see: Inglis, Lucy. 2018. <i>Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium</i>. London: Macmillan. </ref>
==Summary==