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<blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 3519287" data-attributes="member: 1165">I almost never see references to &quot;medieval&quot; societies mentioning drug use, but I do have two examples. Neither is actually from the Middle Ages.It was wrong to use drugs in Ancient Rome, although they didn't have punishment other than the social kind (eg people mock a drug user for being a drug user, thirty years down the road they mock the drug user for their memory problems brought about by drug use).China fought two Opium Wars with Britain over the issue of drug use, the first one around 1840 (definitely post-medieval era). There were people using opium in China before the British arrive, but the problem became many times worse when the British started selling opium to Chinese criminals, marked with the Queen's own symbol!I just don't think medieval societies could have had such a big drug problem... a lack of chemical knowledge and a lack of rapid mass transport meant that continuously supplying users with drugs would have been very difficult (and the drug costs would be very expensive). Drug users would probably use local drugs that came from plants that hadn't been specifically bred for drug production. I couldn't really tell you what punishment, if any, there were for drug use. While the problem would not have been as severe as it is today, it could still have been pretty bad.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="(Psi)SeveredHead, post: 3519287, member: 1165"] I almost never see references to "medieval" societies mentioning drug use, but I do have two examples. Neither is actually from the Middle Ages. It was wrong to use drugs in Ancient Rome, although they didn't have punishment other than the social kind (eg people mock a drug user for being a drug user, thirty years down the road they mock the drug user for their memory problems brought about by drug use). China fought two Opium Wars with Britain over the issue of drug use, the first one around 1840 (definitely post-medieval era). There were people using opium in China before the British arrive, but the problem became [b]many[/b] times worse when the British started selling opium to Chinese criminals, marked with the Queen's own symbol! I just don't think medieval societies could have had such a big drug problem... a lack of chemical knowledge and a lack of rapid mass transport meant that continuously supplying users with drugs would have been very difficult (and the drug costs would be very expensive). Drug users would probably use local drugs that came from plants that hadn't been specifically bred for drug production. I couldn't really tell you what punishment, if any, there were for drug use. While the problem would not have been as severe as it is today, it could still have been pretty bad. [/QUOTE]

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