every class of person is condemned unsparingly by all classes of the community, but particularly by the Chinese. They do not see the victims of opium as the Chinese themselves do. In any comparison between opium and alcohol, they say, opium produces effects that alcohol does not: Chinese intoxicants contain substances that Europeans do not contract the habit of taking.
Asiatics are more liable to contract the habit of opium smoking because it is less injurious than eating opiates, as a sedative it is adapted to the passive temperament of the Asiatics. The quantity of fusel oil in alcohol suffices to make Europeans averse to it. The Chinaman wants sedatives for practical life and a stimulant of his imagination; alcoholic liquors produce exceptional and rare cases of excessive indulgence only.
In Chinese experience, only individuals exceptionally weak in power, who anyhow would be wrecked in the struggle for existence, become opium addicts. They cannot break themselves free without help or constraint once they are formed into the habit.
Opium allays worry and is pleasurable. This is the originating incentive to its use. Opium smoking is not regarded by the Chinese as a prophylactic but as a form of self-indulgence.
They would procure opium from the warehouses; they would not be likely to take to alcohol readily unless cheap alcohol drinks like the existing Chinese liqueurs in suitable forms were pressed upon them. They would certainly not abstain altogether; it is vicious but pleasant.
Opium sots as a rule hate the habit and desire to get free from it but cannot resist the craving. There is among all Chinese whom I know an innate dislike of foreigners and of everything foreign unless it is very obviously beneficial.
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