trivia

Person
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria: was a Colombian drug lord who was considered by members of the government, news reporters and the general public alike to be one of the most ruthless, ambitious and powerful drug dealers Colombia ever had. He made millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars smuggling cocaine into the United States. Source: Wikipedia

History
Opium Wars: “The foreigners were especially irritated by the high customs duties the Chinese forced them to pay and by the attempts of the Chinese authorities to stop the growing import trade in opium. The drug had long been used to stop diarrhea, but in the seventeenth and eighteenth century people in all classes began to use it recreationally. Most opium came from Turkey or India, and in 1800 its import was forbidden by the imperial government. (…) By the late 1830s more than 30,000 chests, each of which held about 150 pounds of the extract, were being brought in annually by the various foreign powers. Some authorities assert that the trade in opium alone reversed China's formerly favorable balance of trade. In the spring of 1839 Chinese authorities at Canton confiscated and burned the opium. In response, the British occupied positions around Canton”. Read more

Film
Traffic (2000): directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio Del Toro, Jacob Vargas and Michael Douglas. Tagline: No One Gets Away Clean. Plot Outline: A conservative judge is appointed by the President to spearhead America's escalating war against drugs, only to discover that his teenage daughter is a heroin addict. Source: IMBd

Numbers
The number of drug deaths in the US in a typical year is as follows:

All illegal drugs combined kill about 4,500 people per year, or about one percent of the number killed by alcohol and tobacco. Tobacco kills more people each year than all of the people killed by all of the illegal drugs in the last century. Read more

Thing
Hookah: an Eastern smoking pipe said to have originated in India before spreading to Iran, different parts of the Arab world and Turkey. It is designed with a long tube passing through an urn of water that cools the smoke as it is drawn through. It is used to smoke tobacco and other drugs.

Song
Heroin by Lou Reed
See lyrics

Quotes
Drugs are marvellous if you want to escape, but reality is so rich, why escape?
Geraldine Chaplin, US actress
The best mind-altering drug is truth.
Lily Tomlin, US actress, comedienne
There is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs, they are weak men. Only strong men are cured, and they cure themselves.
Martin H. Fischer, Canadian physician

Wordplay
DIISOBUTYLPHENOXYETHOXYETHYLDIM-
ETHYLBENZYLAMMONIUMCHLORIDE has appeared in the Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association. It is the chemical name of a drug they announced in the 1950s. Source: Word Oddities

Literature
Confessions of an Opium-Eater by Thomas DeQuincey
Read book

Date
c. 1650 The use of tobacco is prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony, and in Zurich, but the prohibitions are ineffective. Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire decrees the death penalty for smoking tobacco. Read more