In his generous review of my book, Opium: a History (The Review, July 6), Jim Biddulph criticises my (as he puts it) apocalyptic statement that heroin is 'an agent for the most insidious undermining of human society' and he wonders if I am suggesting that a person or persons unknown devised a plot to subvert society.
The answer, of course, is yes. The opium traders of the 19th century (predominantly, but by no means exclusively, British) deliberately subverted China for profit: Japan sought to do likewise with heroin throughout the Sino-Japanese War, for political ends.
Today, a number of governments and political organisations covertly trade in, or turn a blind eye to, narcotics trafficking, using this as a source of valuable foreign currency or domestic taxation. I may be rightly accused of implying a worldwide, James Bond, Spectre-type conspiracy: yet this was not the intention. My aim was to point out that heroin has and is exercising a vast social and political potential for destabilising society.
What Jim Biddulph dismisses as vicarious doomwatch verbiage is, sadly, not meant for effect: he needs only to see the growing effects of the extensive infiltration of heroin (and crack) into the townships of South Africa over the last two years, not to mention soaring heroin addiction in northern Vietnam, Yunnan and Szechuan, to appreciate the all-too-real doomwatch dangers.
MARTIN BOOTH Taunton, Somerset, UK
