Chapter 137 – Making Money

Author’s Note:

Note:

In 1729, Emperor Yongzheng issued the “Regulations on Trafficking and Opening Opium Dens,” the first anti-opium law in the world. Its specific content included: those who traffic in opium shall be shackled for a month and exiled; privately opening opium dens and luring others to take drugs is treated as an illegal organization, resulting in a suspended death sentence; those who are accomplices receive one hundred strokes and are exiled three thousand miles, while those who protect them are punished with one hundred strokes and three years in prison; there are also specific penalties for supervisory officials.

On March 2, 1912, shortly after taking office, Provisional President Sun Yat-sen issued the “Provisional President’s Edict on Banning Opium,” denouncing opium as “capable of destroying livelihoods and lives on a small scale, and capable of destroying a country and its people on a large scale.”