BACKGROUND Opium is a unique substance, regarding its analgesic effects. This may change the deteriorating effects of coronary artery disease (CAD) on quality of life (QOL) in addicted patients. OBJECTIVES We studied the QOL in opium-addicted and non-addicted CAD patients so as to determine the relationship between CAD risk factors and the subscales of their QOL. PATIENTS AND METHODS Demogr...

Over the course of human history, it has been common to use plants for medicinal purposes, such as for providing relief from particular maladies and self-medication. Opium represents one longstanding remedy that has been used to address a range of medical conditions, alleviating discomfort often in ways that have proven pleasurable. Opium is a combination of compounds obtained from the mature f...

We assess the impact of the opium trade on the economies of colonial Malaya, Netherlands Indies, and China from 1873 to 1911 using a new database of stock and commodity prices, plus measures of government revenues, commodity exports, and immigration. Stock returns for a few Malayan industries related to international trade are significantly correlated with opium price changes, as are prices for...

This paper examines the recent growth of the opium economy in North Eastern Afghanistan. A detailed analysis of one village in Badakshan Province reveals profound changes in the local economy and social institutions. The paper describes two major shifts in the local economy (1) the switch from wheat to poppy cultivation (2) the shift from the livestock trade to the opium trade. It then examines...

This article deals with the relationship between opium revenue farming and the development of capitalist enterprises in Southeast Asia. It examines the role which opium played in the transformation of all Asian economies during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While few would deny that the unprecedented expansion of the opium trade by European traders had a major, usually destructi...

Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Badakhshan, a borderland province the northeast of Afghanistan, paper explores role that opium poppy cultivation has played marginal high-altitude economy. Framed by analytic ‘narco-frontiers’ and puzzle persistence small farmers uneven agrarian transitions, investigates diversity market non-market institutions operate across means production opium. Rather than...