This is my experience too. The most extended treatment
of the subject that I remember is in connection with the pro-opium
testimony before the 1893 Royal Commission on the Opium trade (testifying
that opium consumption is much more benign than alcohol consumption, that
it never leads to violence as alcohol does). I would look in Berridge and
Edwards or Terry Parssinen's SECRET PASSIONS.

Marty Roth
University of Minnesota

On Thu, 20 Aug 1998, Dan Malleck wrote:

> Hello all.
> I may be looking in all the wrong places, but I seem to be unable to find
> any extended, direct, recent comparisons between nineteenth-century ideas
> about alcohol and opiate use and habituation.  I am finding that historians
> who do discuss the two forms of addiction generally either deal with one,
> nodding perhaps to the other, or conflate different forms of addiction.  I
> find that conflation in primary material, too, and I figure someone has had
> to examine this topic in detail.  I could really use a solid comparison.
> Any suggestions?
>
> Dan Malleck
> Queen's University, Kingston
>