Hope this isnt considered a question leading to intent to perform criminal acs because I’m just curious.
Uh, which Chinatown? Vancouver’s Chinatown has plenty of “Shooting Galleries” which are sort of an evolution of the concept.
Oh well i was thinking of NY’s Chinatown, and im not talking about shooting heroin, but real opium dens, the long pipe, chaise lounge, etc .
I briefly walked through San Francisco’s Chinatown a few times and it isn’t exactly an upper-class neighborhood, but I wouldn’t know if opium, per se, is common there.
I just recently read an article about a man who was looking for a real opium den. I think it might have been Vanity Fair, unsure.
Anyway, not only are there no opium dens in Chinatown anymore, you can’t even find them in China.
The author IIRC, ended up in Southeast Asia somewhere. He had to search for a couple of weeks. He finally found one in an upstairs apartment in a small village.
I guess what is happening is that opium is more profitable as heroin than in its straight form. Almost all of the pure stuff is being sold to big cartels (read: Russian Mafia) who are turning it into heroin.
most opium/heroin comes from Afganistan so the price may rise sharply if the Taliban are defeated.
It was Vanity Fair from around a year ago. I was going to post about it too.
Haj
While it’s currently popular to associate the Taliban with every form of trouble in the world, the truth is that they have always been very active in suppressing opium and heroin production in Afghanistan. Best guess is that a Taliban defeat will result in a noticable decrease in the price of drugs.
Do you have a cite for this claim? I just saw something this weekend on MSNBC, FOX or CNN which said that there is currently more opium being cultivated in Taliban controled areas than ever before. A Taliban spokesman said that with the economy in ruins, the people need a cash crop. He also said the Taliban has ‘plans’ to end poppy cultivation at some time in the future.
Based on this article, my claims that more poppies were being cultivated than before is tenuous. It seems that both Little Nemo and I were correct to varying degrees.
Deadwood, South Dakota has kept its old opium dens (without the opium of course) as part of the old Wild West tourism trade. All this is part of the Mt. Rushmore and Little Big Horn trip. And don’t miss Hot Springs, South Dakota, home of Evan’s Plunge (the only thing in town really worth doing).
Re: Cultivation of Opium Poppies in Afghanistan.
Here’s the real data in pdf format for 2001 from the UN. Cultivation appears to have been severely curtailed in 2001 by the Taliban. Unofficial reports are that the Taliban have let up for economic reasons recently.