Word: opium
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Before globalization, there was trade. Some ports, like Hong Kong or New York, began by handling tea or opium, then progressed to manufacturing and finance. Others, like Alexandria or Pulau Run (one of the Indonesian Spice Islands that, in 1667, the Dutch swapped with the English for Manhattan) failed to move with the times...
...Golden Relief." To prevent more of the country from being washed over with a morphine-induced golden relief, the government introduced the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, creating the Food and Drug Administration. While it didn't apply to marijuana and merely brought the distribution of opium and morphine under doctors' control, the regulation of chemical substances was a major shift in American drug policy. (See pictures of cannabis culture...
...wasn't until 1914 that drug use was defined as a crime, under the Harrison Act. To get around states' rights issues, the act used a tax to regulate opium- and coca-derived drugs: it levied a tax on nonmedical uses of the drugs that was much higher than the cost of the drugs themselves, and punished anyone using the drugs without paying the tax. By 1937, 23 states had outlawed marijuana: some to stop former morphine addicts from taking up a new drug, and some as a backlash against newly arrived Mexican immigrants, some of whom brought the drug...
Compare this to Greg Mortenson, nominated for the prize by some members of Congress, whom the bookies gave 20-to-1 odds of winning. Son of a missionary, a former Army medic and mountaineer, he has made it his mission to build schools for girls in places where opium dealers and tribal warlords kill people for trying. His Central Asia Institute has built more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan - a mission which has, along the way, inspired millions of people to view the protection and education of girls as a key to peace and prosperity and progress...
...measure of politics and security, but its jails are no longer filled with thousands of political prisoners; in cities and towns, girls go to schools and universities; a feisty free press flourishes, and there are plenty of new millionaires whose fortunes were not necessarily made from trafficking opium, but from bricks and mortar, cell-phone towers and trade...