The provinces famous for it are Chekeang, Yunnan, While southwestern China produces 224,000 peculs, against 100,000 peculs from India. Today over half the provinces of China produce opium, and the habit of opium smoking seems confirmed. Turkey is noted for its production, and the best opium used in the United States by druggists comes from there. In Macedonia the crop is estimated at 140,000 pounds per annum. Opium has been raised in Virginia and Tennessee, as well as California, but owing to the lack of cheap labor and the uncertainty of the crops, due to frosts, the business is unprofitable.
Some excessive smokers use from four to eight dollars' worth a week.
The drug is smoked as freely as tobacco. First, there are the opium dens. There are scores of these dens in the Chinese quarter of every large city. There the Chinaman can buy his pipe and smoke in peace. In San Francisco white people are forbidden to visit these dens, but they have such places of their own, which are well known to the police, and the vice is ever spreading and increasing.