The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West

The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West is a pathbreaking study of Anglo-American perceptions of Chinese immigrants and their culture, and of the growing use of opium by middle-class Anglo-Americans. The fight to combat drug use by Anglos became conflated with anti-Chinese emotions to stimulate demands that Chinese immigrants be excluded from entering the U.S. This is a powerful study of an important nineteenth-century American public health problem. It also illustrates the way a vexing social problem can be manipulated to aggravate racial and cultural biases.