Queen Victoria reigned for 63 years but the monarch was also major player in the opium trade, and she has now been named the biggest drug dealer in history by Time magazine
Queen Victoria, an English monarch, has been dubbed the greatest drug kingpin in history. The Queen was known for her fondness for alcohol, particularly a peculiar blend of whisky and red wine.
However, long before the birth of notorious drug lord Joaquín Guzmán (El Chapo) and Pablo Escobar, Victoria had a well-known interest in drugs. One of her preferred beverages was Vin Mariani, a concoction made by infusing cocoa leaves in French red wine, to which cocaine was added. According to the BBC, Victoria, who ascended to the throne at the tender age of 18 in 1837, is said to have enjoyed ‘cocaine gum’ with a young Winston Churchill.
It’s worth noting that cocaine was legal at the time, and Europeans were starting to experiment with this new substance. Cocaine chewing gum was touted as a self-esteem booster and a remedy for toothaches.
The queen also believed it was a health drug with no adverse effects.
Victoria, who presided over the British Empire, also used a liquid form of cannabis for menstrual pain and chloroform during childbirth. Tony McMahon, writing in Smithsonian magazine, stated: “Queen Victoria, I think by any standard, she loved her drugs.”
In addition to cocaine and cannabis, Victoria also consumed a glass of laudanum every morning, a mixture of opium (the dried residue of poppies) and alcohol.
And it was her connection with opium that saw her branded the biggest drug dealer in history by Time magazine, who even claimed she made “Escobar and El Chapo look like low-level street dealers”.
The young monarch encountered conflict with China from the earliest moments of her reign. The Chinese supplied tea-loving Brits with their favourite beverage, but there was nothing to exchange in return, meaning only one nation was making money.
Yet opium quickly became the solution, and it was conveniently cultivated in British-controlled India. Consequently, the British East India Company conducted business with China throughout Victoria’s rule.
This opium commerce wasn’t unprecedented, but according to Time, it “grew exceptionally” following her ascension to the throne.
Opium was considered a valuable painkiller, so the British East India Company reaped enormous profits from it, particularly when the Chinese became dependent, making them prepared to pay increasingly higher prices for the habit-forming substance.
Following this reversal in economic power from China to Britain, the Chinese chose to clamp down on the narcotic, which was illegal in the nation but this was typically overlooked.
This ultimately sparked the notorious Opium Wars. Academic Lin Zexu penned a letter directly to Queen Victoria declaring it was unethical to be saturating China with substances that were causing millions of their “elites” to become addicted.
However, the drug trade reportedly accounted for up to 20% of the empire’s annual revenue, so the aforementioned letter was never even opened. According to AlJazeera, a Chinese official wrote: “He who sells opium shall receive the death penalty and he who smokes it also the death penalty.”
Victoria was soon compelled to address the escalating situation after Lin Zexu ordered the interception of a fleet of British ships in 1839, before a staggering amount of opium (2.5 million pounds) was dumped into the South China Sea.
Victoria declared war on China (known as the First Opium War), resulting in the deaths of thousands of Chinese citizens.
Utterly defeated, a “peace treaty” was signed, which saw Britain take control of Hong Kong and more opium ports were established in the region. This brutal defeat, during Victoria’s reign, was seen as the “century of humiliation” for China.
Despite the loss of innocent lives, Victoria, who ruled for 63 years, ruthlessly ensured the opium money kept flowing. It was for this reason that she has been labelled by Time as the most powerful and successful drug lord in history.
