In 1839, Lin Zexu, a Chinese official, wrote a letter to Queen Victoria to appeal to her morality and put an end to the opium menace laying ruins to his country. The problem, as always, lay in economics. Until a few years earlier, China ran a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world (much like it does today), including with the massive British empire. Chinese porcelain, luxuries, and tea were so popular in the United Kingdom that the import duties on tea alone contributed to 10% of the British government’s annual revenues. “On the other hand, articles coming from the outside to China can only be used as toys,” Lin Zexu pointed out in his letter. Britain was therefore losing a lot of silver to pay for Chinese imports and wanted China to buy something in return. And that something they found in opium.

The East India Company forced Indian farmers to grow poppy (which by the way ruined their farms for generations and led to droughts) and used it to make opium, which was then smuggled off into China. Soon, the trade surplus turned into a deficit and silver was now flowing out of China! A mind-boggling fifteen million people in China became addicted to opium, equivalent to more than half the population of Britain at the time. The Qing dynasty eventually took notice and trusted Lin Zexu with the task of bidding opium good riddance.

“I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood,” wrote Lin to the Queen, “Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries.” His appeals fell on deaf ears, so he proceeded to rattle up the issue a little harder. Ports near Hong Kong were besieged until all foreign merchants handed over their opium reserves. On 26th June, 1300 tons of opium was then burnt, the loss of which was estimated to be 1/6th of the United Kingdom’s annual military budget at the time. (The date is still celebrated as the United Nations International Day against Drug Abuse.)

But then came war. The British parliament voted to send a naval force to defeat China. The Qing army was easily overcome, owing to new British steam warships as well as to the rampant opium addiction among Chinese soldiers. At one conquered fort after another, opium pipes were found next to the the defenders’ cannons. Two brief wars were fought - known as the Opium Wars - which ended in humiliating treaties for the Chinese, handing over Hong Kong to the UK, and the legalization of opium. The British celebrated having defended the principles of free trade, never mind that the commodity was grown by not-so-free Indians and sold at gunpoint to Chinese. And opium trade tripled to 6500 tons per year.

Chinese society still struggles with the menace: police launched an anti-drug operation as recently as 2014 in the same region that once served as ports of entry for foreign smugglers. Yet the world faces a bigger crisis today. Whilst only 0.6% of the world population are addicted to hard drugs, as many as 40% may be addicted to smartphones. The average smartphone user rarely goes two hours without using her device, unlocks her device 50 or more times a day, and swipes or taps on it as many as 2,617 times in the process. Smartphone addiction causes anxiety and depression - no wonder that suicide is the second leading cause of death in American young adults. The only cause it trails is accidental injury, and 26% of car accidents are themselves due to the use of a smartphone while driving.

“You get a show or a movie you’re really dying to watch, and you end up staying up late at night, so we actually compete with sleep,” declared the CEO of Netflix, before cherrying it with further good news: “and we’re winning!” While these OTT platforms serve working age adults, the smartphone handles the teens. Almost a billion people use facebook at least once a day, which is not even the most popular one among teens. That would be Tiktok, by Chinese-owned ByteDance, which the average user opens 8 times a day and spends 68 minutes daily (90 minutes for American kids below the age of 15).

Different countries have come up with different ways to deal with these digital addictions. India has outright banned Tiktok, though more for nationalistic reasons than citizen welfare. China has issued strict guidelines for social media and online games, with one state-owned newspaper calling them “opium for the mind.” Duoyin, also by ByteDance, is now restricted to 40 minutes for Chinese kids and is unavailable past midnight. Perhaps some modern day Western reincarnation of Lin Zexu should write a letter to President Xi asking for a similar treatment for Tiktok (which only sells its opium outside China).

Free market proponents instead suggest tackling addiction by taxing the substance - similar to how tobacco is being slowly phased out after its carcinogenic effects became obvious in the seventies. But how should one tax something that’s free? Social media users merely “pay” for the product by lending their eyeballs and attention, so UK lawmakers have proposed imposing a 0.5% tax directly on the platforms’ advertising revenues.

It remains to be seen which, if any, of these tactics could help rid our world of its digital opium addiction. The days ahead are challenging. A global pandemic has ravaged our supply chains and killed millions of people. War clouds are no longer gathering but already raining down in Europe. Extreme weather events are becoming less extreme and more commonplace by the day. If things were to further deteriorate in the following decade, the teenagers of today will find themselves at the frontlines - whether literally or metaphorically. And we would most certainly not want to find smartphones next to their cannons.

Avijit Thawani.

Thanks to Prof Joshua Goldstein who taught me Chinese History at Univ of Southern California.