Chapter 22 ban opium

After opium was introduced into China, it caused great harm to the Chinese government and people. In his memorial to Emperor Daoguang, Lin Zexu said: If opium is not banned, "it will mean that after decades, there will be few soldiers in the Central Plains who can defend against the enemy, and there will be no enemies." money that can be paid for.”However, in the corrupt Qing Dynasty, the anti-smoking campaign ultimately failed, and opium poisoning spread widely in China, becoming a major public nuisance. Sichuan is the hardest hit area for opium.By the 1920s, the cultivation and smoking of opium in Sichuan had grown to an astonishing level. In 1932, the opium planting area in Sichuan had reached 8 million mu, and the annual output was more than 40 million taels based on 50 taels of opium per mu.Tongnanba, located in northern Sichuan, is the most concentrated place for opium cultivation. The opium cultivation area accounts for about 30 to 40 percent of the arable land, and it is all fertile land. "Poppy flowers are everywhere in the poor countryside, and the fields have turned into black soil." "In a city of ten rooms, there must be a smoke den, and if three people walk, there must be addicts." The large area of ​​opium cultivation has resulted in a large number of opium addicts.Opium-smoking farmers spread across thousands of households in northern Sichuan.According to local party history records, after the Red Army entered Tong, Nan, and Ba in 1932, more than 90 percent of the local adult men smoked opium, and more than 70 percent of the adult women smoked opium. There are also many children who are over 100 years old who are infected with drugs.

According to the investigation by the General Political Department of the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army, there are 450 people in 130 households in Deshengchang Town, Jiangkou County, and only 6 of them are non-drug addicts.In Bazhong County, there are 5,765 addicts in one district, accounting for more than 70% of the adult population.Due to the large number of smokers, there are many tobacco dens all over Sichuan, and Bazhong West Street has become a uniform tobacco market. Of the 27 households in Duanyachang, 18 have opened tobacco dens.There are about 1,000 households in Tongjiang County, and more than 200 opium dens.Opium even became a commodity in circulation instead of money, and the giant merchants in Sichuan hoarded it for profit.Opium has even become a god-worshiping offering, and the mouths of clay bodhisattvas in many temples are smeared with opium smoke.The warlords took this opportunity to collect cigarette donations and extort money.According to the "Ta Kung Pao" report at the time: "Tian Songyao's defense area collects taxes and donations ten to twenty times a year, among which tobacco donations are the heaviest. It has been pre-collected from 1932 to 1987."

Opium poisoning destroys the spirit and body of the people, and many people even go bankrupt in order to smoke opium.There is a village in Bazhong called Fu's Courtyard. There are more than 60 people from 20 families in the village. Among them, 25 people from 18 families fled to Tongjiang because they smoked opium and sold all their property. They finally starved to death in Kucaoba. Extinct.Among the 119 households in Huacheng District who went bankrupt due to opium smoking, 43 households sold their children and daughters, 24 households sold their wives, and 21 died in exile.Opium brought extremely serious disasters to the people of Sichuan.

After the Red Fourth Front Army arrived in Tongnanba, expanding the red conscription became a major priority.Although poor people were also willing to join the army, seeing the local people's yellow and thin faces, their faces full of smoke, and their spirits depressed, the leaders of the Northwest Military Commission immediately realized the harm opium caused to the Red Army's base areas.How can we build a base without people growing food and qualified soldiers?How can we talk about expanding the Red Army?They decided to immediately set off a large-scale anti-smoking campaign. To ban smoking, first of all, the local people must be deeply aware of the dangers of smoking and drugs, and wake up from their numb mental state.The Political Department of the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army, the newly established Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Soviet jointly launched a large-scale publicity campaign to reveal the poison of opium and call on the people to rise up and ban opium.The first Congress of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers in Sichuan-Shaanxi Province specifically discussed smoking cessation work, and a smoking cessation bureau was established in the provincial Soviet, with a registration office, a pharmaceutical department, and a rest center. The county Soviets also established smoking cessation bureaus. From January 1933, the Red Fourth Front Army began to help the localities carry out smoking cessation campaigns. By June 1933, the Sichuan-Shanxi Soviets began to focus on large-scale smoking cessation campaigns.According to the Soviet decree, the Smoking Cessation Bureau adopted four strict smoking cessation measures: prohibiting the cultivation of opium and returning the land to plant grain;Various forms of publicity such as conferences, slogans, leaflets, and songs are used in various places to inspire people's awareness of smoking cessation.The political departments of the Red Army at all levels and the Soviet governments at all levels organized propaganda teams to go deep into various parts of Nanba to mobilize the propaganda of the ban on smoking, mobilize the poor people to speak out and accuse the harm of smoking and drugs.

Women are the biggest victims of opium. During the smoking cessation campaign, women in the Sichuan-Shaanxi Soviet Area played a pioneering role. They actively advised their relatives not to smoke, grow or sell opium, and supervised smoking cessation for parents, husbands and children who smoked. They were sent to smoking cessation centers to help them implement the methods of quitting smoking, and organized to complain about the poison of opium. But women have become the vanguards of smoking cessation, which is beyond our expectation... Although there are many women who smoke, they unanimously tell the pain they have suffered.Some said that she only had one lovely son, and because her husband had no money to buy cigarettes, he sold him out.Some said that her son and daughter were sick because both husband and wife smoked opium, so they had no money for medical treatment, and died as a result.Some said that the only pair of trousers she had was used by her husband to change for cigarettes, which prevented her from going out for a long time.

Women's smoking cessation conferences have been held in various places to promote smoking cessation work.At a women's smoking cessation meeting held in Tongjiang, more than 5,000 women participated.About 300 people quit smoking in the first phase, and the number increased to more than 1,000 in the second phase. The Smoking Cessation Bureau became the largest institution.After a year of hard work, more than 3,000 people have quit smoking at the Smoking Cessation Bureau. On the basis that the government attaches great importance to the approval of the people, the Soviets at all levels implement compulsory abstinence from opium smokers.Introduced by the provincial and county Soviets to the smoking cessation bureau's ad hoc rest center for isolation and smoking cessation.During the period of isolation and smoking cessation, the government provided meals. The Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Smoking Cessation Bureau specially hired doctors to make "smoking cessation pills" with traditional Chinese medicines such as safflower, mustard seed, and poria cocos, and a small amount of opium, and distributed them to various smoking cessation centers. Quantitative methods combine smoking cessation with disease treatment. Generally, after a week, the "quit smoking pill" only contains the medicinal ingredients for disease treatment.Because of the obvious effect of "Quit Smoking Pill", it is called "Shen Wanzi".Smoking cessation is a major issue related to the success of the construction of the base area. The main leaders of the Northwest Military Commission Zhang Guotao, Xu Xiangqian, and Chen Changhao even took time to inspect and supervise the smoking cessation center during the tense days of guiding the war.

On February 16, 1933, the ninth issue of "The Poor People in Northern Sichuan", the official newspaper of the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee, reported the effectiveness of smoking cessation in Bazhong County: More than 100 people will quit smoking in one day, more than 50 people have completely quit smoking within two weeks, and it will take one month for four years without pain. Due to the obvious effect of smoking cessation, the smoking cessation centers all over the Soviet area are overcrowded, with no less than two to three hundred people in each session.In the first half of 1933 alone, more than 6,000 people in Bazhong County got rid of their addiction to smoking. From January 1933 to the second half of 1934, the entire Tong, Nan, and Ba were basically Quit smoking.In the entire Sichuan-Shanxi Soviet Area, except for a few places with quotas for tobacco planting, the rest of the places stopped planting tobacco.The "Guowen Weekly" of the Kuomintang ruled area reported: "In Tongnanbachi District, the cultivation of opium tobacco is absolutely prohibited. When we walked into these areas, we could hardly see a single tobacco seedling."