Word: opium
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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While relentlessly pursuing international drug traffickers, however, Louis Métra confessed a romantic sympathy for the addicts - especially artists, writers and wealthy thrill-seekers - who bought their goods. "My curiosity is renewed each time I watch an opium smoker going through the rite," he once said. "It is like a priest venerating a divinity. The bluish smoke goes up like incense dedicated to some ethereal goddess. Opium smokers are delicate, delicious people...
...became suspicious. One day last fall, armed with a telescope, police in an apartment across the street watched two known female addicts drop in on Louis and pick up a large package. They followed the women back to their apartment and caught them busily boiling down a batch of opium. There was still no direct proof that Métra had provided the opium, but the police kept watching and waiting. The watching was doubly difficult since Métra knew all the cop tricks, and it would not do to trail him in the familiar black Citroen...
Last week the cops got all the evidence they needed. Louis Métra parked his car on the fashionable Boulevard Suchet. got out and walked a few feet, then satisfied that he was not being followed, returned to his car for a small package of opium for a nobleman in a nearby apartment. At this point, the cops jumped out of their Buick convertible, caught him with the goods and arrested the onetime foe of Parisian vice for dope peddling...
...Morland recounted a day's drinking at Brighton: beginning with Hollands gin and rum and milk before breakfast, it went on through nine different beverages, including opium and water, topped off with gin, shrub and rum before...
Each day the Binh Xuyen (pronounced bin soo yen) pays the Vietnamese government about $10,000 in "taxes," and gets in return the monopoly control of Saigon's brothels, gambling casinos and opium dens (which are called "clinics of disintoxication"). The Binh Xuyen's enterprises are one of the main sources of revenue for Chief of State Bao Dai, who lives in luxury on the French Riviera. The Binh Xuyen is greatly feared in Saigon: its policemen recently beat a Vietnamese army contingent in pitched street fighting. The Binh Xuyen is also respected for its efficiency...