When Li Yu returned home, he heard the painful wailing of Uncle Wang's son again. It had been many days, but he still had not succeeded in quitting.
Not long after, Uncle Wang came back tremblingly with a pack of medicine. It was a smoking cessation essence powder he bought from Watsons.
But Li Yu knew this very well, it was the IQ tax.
With the advancement of medicine in later generations, it is not easy to quit drug addiction. How can it be done with a small pack of quit smoking powder?
As mentioned before, its ingredients are just some cheap supplements, plus some soot and tobacco left after burning opium, and some high-end ones add some morphine.
How can this thing be used to detoxify?
Early the next morning, the pale-faced Uncle Wang came to Li Yu and said: "Sir, after being tied up for so many days, why does my son still look like a ghost? The ropes and strips of cloth that tied him were so tight that his hands and feet were covered with blood. I, I
I can’t stand it anymore!”
Uncle Wang burst into tears, and Li Yu sighed, saying that he had no good solution.
Li Yu asked: "Really can't bear it?"
Uncle Wang wiped his tears and said: "He struggled to get free and his arm was dislocated several times. If Master Huo hadn't been there, we wouldn't have even set his bones. But Master Huo said that there were too many dislocations and if this continues,
Not a good thing."
Among the methods of detoxification, one is indeed "dry detoxification", which means staying away from drugs without using any drugs. Of course, the process is more painful.
There were no related drugs at the beginning of the 20th century.
What's more, even if there are drugs, there will still be many addicts who will relapse later in life.
So even in modern society, drug addiction is still very difficult. It also tests people's willpower, but how many addicts have good willpower?
——Almost an infinite loop.
Seeing that Li Yu didn't speak, Uncle Wang asked tentatively: "How about giving him a big smoke and taking it easy first?"
Li Yu shook his head and said firmly: "Definitely not!"
By this time, missionaries in the late Qing Dynasty had already brought a drug to help people quit smoking, but that thing was even more nonsense because it was called "morphine".
The chemical molecular formula of morphine is c17h19no3 and that of heroin is c21h23no5. It can be seen that they are very close.
As for opium, it is a drug made by mixing various different substances together. It has no chemical formula. But the main alkaloid in opium is morphine.
It can be seen from this that using morphine to detoxify is definitely a bad idea.
Uncle Wang knelt down: "Sir, no matter what, you must save my only son! I will pay for the mistakes he made in this life; if you can save him, I will work for you in the next life to repay your kindness."
!”
"Get up quickly!" Li Yu pulled him up, "I told you not to kneel down to me casually at home. I can't stand this."
Uncle Wang wiped away tears: "Then can you save him?"
Li Yu said: "You take good care of him first, and I'll think of a way to deal with him later."
Uncle Wang said happily: "Sir, you have great powers, you must have a way!"
These servants in Li Yu's family really regard Li Yu as a god.
After he left, Li Yu called Yu and Qin, who knew chemistry, and they chatted and came up with some good ideas.
Yu Heqin hated drugs and all kinds of opium dens very much. He once thought of using chemical methods to detoxify, but to no avail.
Li Yu also hates drugs. It should be said that Chinese people hate drugs in their bones because of history.
Looking around the world, when it comes to the intensity of drug control, no one can compare with China in later generations. It is really prohibitive to death.
According to our efforts, not to mention the Golden Triangle, the Silver Triangle, and Mexico, even the so-called "lighthouse country" of the United States will have at least tens of millions of people eating peanuts.
Because there is one thing, assuming that there is 1g of drugs in a ball of 100g of flour, but it cannot be separated, then it will be calculated as 100g!
It can be said that he will kill without mercy and will never let go.
At that time, a British man was executed for drug trafficking in China. The British were furious and protested wildly. But...the protest was ineffective.
Because of modern history, Chinese people really hate drugs.
Li Yu felt very overwhelmed, not just Xiao Wang, because his situation was not an exception.
Everyone knows that opium was banned in Humen, but the anti-smoking campaign promoted by the imperial court ultimately failed due to the defeat of the two Opium Wars.
After the humiliating Treaty of Tianjin was signed, the British forced the Qing government to rename opium "foreign medicine" and allow the opium trade.
Now that it has been legalized, it is impossible to enforce a smoking ban. So in fact, opium has been poisoning the Chinese people, and it was not until the founding of the People's Republic of China that complete drug ban was truly realized.
Moreover, after the "Treaty of Tianjin", the Qing government decided to "fight poison with poison". Li Hongzhang, the governor of Zhili, reported: "We can neither ban British merchants from selling foreign cigarettes nor ban Chinese people from eating foreign cigarettes. The ban on opium poppies in various provinces should be temporarily relaxed."
”.
The subtext in the words is obvious.
As soon as this opportunity was opened, the output of China's self-produced poppy increased greatly, and because growing poppy was far more cost-effective than other crops, growing poppy has even become the main occupation of farmers in the three provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan in the southwest.
Due to the price advantage of domestically produced opium, by the 1880s, the Manchus had become completely self-sufficient in opium. Even by the end of the Qing Dynasty, they began to export opium.
Yes, you read that right, it was not Lin Zexu who finally defeated imported opium, but domestically produced opium.
But no matter what, the harm to the people has not been reduced at all.
Until the Republic of China, there were still many, many people who smoked opium.
This is a bad thing that seriously harms the country's strength.
Li Yu really wanted to change this situation, but he didn't know what to do at the moment. Because he lived in an era where drug control was so strong that he never had to consider such a thing.
——
The next day, Tang Shaoyi came to Li Yu's residence.
"Brother Shucai," Tang Shaoyi said after entering the door, "your guess is indeed correct. The woman named Kawahara Soko from Japan is a Japanese spy!"
"Shh!" Li Yu quickly stopped him, "Let's go to the back room to talk."
He was worried that Konoe Akiyuki would hear it.
Japan really attaches great importance to espionage work. For half a century, Japan has been desperately infiltrating espionage everywhere in China.
Konoe Akiyuki, Kawahara Soko, and the future Kawashima Yoshiko are just the tip of the iceberg.
Moreover, the status of leading espionage figures in the Japanese military is not low, which shows that Japan attaches great importance to it.
The two came to Li Yu's study, and Li Yu told Zhao Qian: "Watch it, don't let anyone in."
Tang Shaoyi said: "Are you so careful in your own house?"
"Every time you take a step, you gain wisdom. You can't fall twice in the same place!" Li Yu said, and then asked, "Has Soko Kawahara started taking action in the palace of the Mongolian King Gong?"
Tang Shaoyi said: "Yes, we followed your method to decrypt their telegrams, and indeed we used the most basic encryption method. From her reply, we know that Japan sent four special mission teams from the capital.
', their purpose is to blast Russia's Dongqing Railway Jiangqiao and other military facilities and transportation hubs in the northeast."
Li Yu said: "This is all secret information. You shouldn't disclose it to the Russians, right?"
"Dog bites dog, we don't care! We just want to know what they are going to do," Tang Shaoyi said. "Kawahara Soko changed his name to Shen. The information was first sent to Chengde, and then sent from Chengde to the capital. But this process is difficult for us to detect. ."
Li Yu immediately understood: "What Tang Daotai means is that the telegrams sent by the Japanese from Chengde to the capital were encrypted at a military level?"
Tang Shaoyi nodded: "Yes, our telegraph class in Beiyang has just been established, and we can't even start with slightly more complicated passwords. So I came to ask for advice from my brothers."
Li Yu knew very well that cryptography was a branch of mathematics and that its role in warfare was as important as the radio system itself.
Li Yu said frankly: "Decryption is not an easy task. It requires professional mathematics masters, and it is best to understand Japanese and Japanese writing habits. It also requires a lot of text analysis and comparison."
Tang Shaoyi said: "So troublesome? It's hard to find someone who knows both mathematics and Japanese. All I can think of is you, brother Shucai."
Li Yu said: "We have talked before. This alone is not enough. We must monitor for a long time and accumulate enough messages to facilitate deciphering."
"I understand, it is always good to have a direction. The worst we can do is continue training in schools!" Tang Shaoyi said, "Speaking of schools, we Beiyang can also fund your school in Tianjin to train more people who understand mathematics and Japanese. Isn’t it wonderful to be a man!”
Li Yu said: "Cultivating mathematical talents has always been within the scope of my plan, and since I want to study abroad, foreign language is of course a required course."
Tang Shaoyi said: "After returning to Tianjin, I contacted Brother Fan Sun. His school will be built immediately. We will work together to ensure that Zhili can become a pioneer of new learning."
Yan Fansun has now been appointed by Yuan Shikai as the Supervisor of the Zhili School Department, and the schools in the Zhili area are under his unified control.
Tang Shaoyi is a relatively optimistic person. As long as there is hope, he will not despair. So after listening to Li Yu's words, he felt better, took out a cigar from his arms, lit it and took a puff.
After Li Yu saw it, he had an idea: "Yes!"
Tang Shaoyi wondered: "Who has it? Could it be..."
Li Yu smiled and said, "I suddenly had an idea."
Tang Shaoyi asked: "What idea makes you so excited?"
Li Yu asked back: "Tang Daotai, have you ever considered submitting a letter to ban smoking?"
Tang Shaoyi just took a puff of his cigar and looked at the smoke rings he blew out.
Li Yu quickly added: "What I said is, ban smoking and opium."
Tang Shaoyi said solemnly: "Brother Shucai really cares about his family and country, but it is not easy to ban smoking. Opium now accounts for a large proportion of the court's taxes."
Li Yu said: "But opium poisons all living beings, causing people to lose their labor force and even making it impossible to cultivate crops. The harm is far-reaching."
Speaking of which, smoking opium is really a very troublesome thing.
The process is extremely cumbersome. There are many procedures, which must be done very skillfully, and the cycle is repeated repeatedly. Even an expert in opium smoking will spend a lot of time on it. Therefore, people with lofty ideals who opposed opium smoking in the late Qing Dynasty always emphasized repeatedly that opium smoking People waste hours of time every day.
Tang Shaoyi said: "At that time, Mr. Lin once worriedly said that opium would lead to 'the country has no usable silver and the king has no usable soldiers.' But now that the opium produced in the southwest has solved the outflow of silver, the imperial court is much less vigilant about it. few."
"This is not the attitude towards one's own people!" Li Yu said angrily.
Tang Shaoyi smiled and said: "Brother Shucai, I understand that you are passionate, but there are some people in the court who are obsessed with money."
Ever since the super-corrupt official Prince Qing Yikuang became the Chief Military Minister and took over all the power, he has placed more emphasis on money.
Li Yu clenched his fist and said reluctantly: "It seems that there is only one way."
Tang Shaoyi asked curiously: "What can I do?"
Li Yu said: "Tang Daotai should know about cigarettes, right?"
"Cigarettes?" Tang Shaoyi said, "I've seen them in the concession."
Li Yu sighed: "It can only be used to replace opium."
Tang Shaoyi thought quickly and immediately understood Li Yu's thinking, so she asked: "Cigarettes are less harmful than smoking?"
Li Yu said: "It's even smaller than the cigar you smoke in your hand, but the harm is still there."
Li Yu actually said the most crucial point.
Tang Shaoyi could think of the rest, and naturally let a less harmful thing take the place of smoking, which would not affect tax revenue, and would not become a drug.
"I understand!" Tang Shaoyi said, "Brother Shucai, you are truly worthy of being an imperial master. You can come up with such a wonderful way to get the best of both worlds!"
Li Yu said helplessly: "What's the best of both worlds? At best, it's the lesser of two evils."
Historically, it was indeed the emergence of tobacco that drove opium out of the market.
To put it bluntly, tobacco is actually the same thing as opium. It is also a soft drug that is addictive and harmful to health.
But tobacco is much less harmful than smoking;
Secondly, large-scale tobacco cultivation may contribute even more to finance.
This gives a perfect answer to the most important reason for the imperial court to ban opium - taxation.
Only then could opium be completely banned.
To put it bluntly, can you expect the Qing government or the Republic of China government to achieve the extremely determined anti-drug intensity they did after the founding of the People's Republic of China?
It's just a joke, I look up to them so much.
So Li Yu thought of this curve method.
Anyway, opium was really banned not because of anything else but because of tobacco.
Without the large-scale promotion of tobacco, perhaps opium would have been spread longer and wider.
Tang Shaoyi said excitedly: "Brother Shucai, you don't know that Marshal Yuan is thinking about uniting with the ministers to submit a memorial and considering implementing the "No Smoking Regulations", but he has not considered the follow-up strategy. You have really helped Marshal Yuan a lot!"
Historically, it was not until two years later, in 1906, that the Qing government actually issued the "Ten Articles on Smoking Ban".
Then in 1907, the Sino-British Anti-Smoking Treaty was signed with the United Kingdom.
From the Opium War in 1840, because opium started China's modern history, to the official ban on smoking finally passed in 1907, the damn thing opium has survived in China for too long.
It's long past time to get rough!
Then around 1909, the Qing government participated in the World Anti-Smoking Conference and gained international support.
The British agreed to gradually reduce the import of opium from India in the next ten years based on the Qing government's smoking ban. As a result, the external difficulties of the Qing government's smoking ban were relatively properly resolved.
Of course, the sooner these things are implemented, the better!
Tang Shaoyi immediately used the telegraph machine at Li Yu's home to send a message to Yuan Shikai in Tianjin to report the situation.
While sending the telegram, Li Yu said to Uncle Wang: "You and Zhao Qian go to the foreign store in Dongjiaomin Lane and buy a few packs of cigarettes for your son to use first."
Uncle Wang said happily: "Cigarettes? Can they cure his drug addiction?"
Li Yu said: "It should be effective, but we cannot completely abandon the method of 'dry quitting'. Cigarettes are just a transitional method. In mathematics, this is called substitution and simplification. Turn a difficult problem into an easier one first."
problem, and then think of a solution.”
Uncle Wang didn't understand the mathematical terms of "substitution" and "simplification", so he said: "Sir, he is indeed a god-like person. I'll go right away!"
After Tang Shaoyi sent the telegram, he felt even more comfortable. He took a few puffs of his cigar and said, "Finally there is something that can eliminate opium!"
Li Yu said: "This matter still needs to be promoted at the court level."
"Master, don't worry. As long as you don't delay those princes and nobles making money, things will be easy to handle!" Tang Shaoyi said, but after a pause, he added, "It's just that the Shanghai side may not be able to stand it."
Li Yu said: "You are referring to the Sassoon family, the richest man in Shanghai?"
Tang Shaoyi said: "Of course it is them. I think you may have to take time to go to Shanghai to take care of the development of your school. Sassoon is in the Shanghai Concession, which is not easy."
Speaking of which, most people don't know that the largest importer of opium into China is actually a group of Jewish drug trafficking groups. The largest and longest-lasting among them is the Sassoon family in the Shanghai Concession.
The Sassoon family made huge profits from selling opium, making their family known as the "Oriental Rothschilds".
In addition, there is another misunderstanding in the eyes of most ordinary people: they believe that the East India Company was the main party dumping drugs to China during the First Opium War.
This view is wrong!
During the First Opium War, the proportion of opium sold by the East India Company was negligible.
The real situation is: the British government at that time transferred the opium management rights from the East India Company to Jewish opium traffickers.
Of course, the nationality of these Jewish drug traffickers is British, and it is not wrong to say that the British imported opium to China.
However, it was not the British government or the East India Company that directly trafficked opium, but family-owned Jewish drug dealers who paid a large amount of taxes to the British government.
The Sassoon family had strongholds in both India, where opium was produced, and China, where it was sold, and integrated opium production and sales. Many foreigners in the Shanghai Concession lamented that "silver flows to the Sassoon family like snowflakes."
Even Hartung, the super real estate developer in Shanghai whom Li Yu met before, also worked with Sassoon in his early years.
Almost half of the cigarettes sold by Lin Zexu in Humen belonged to the Sassoon family.
Sassoon became furious. He happened to be married to the powerful Rothschild family, so they went to the British Parliament to lobby together. Only then did the British Parliament vote to launch the Opium War with a slight advantage.
There is no need to say more about what happened next.
From this perspective, the Sassoon family, a super drug cartel, is more destructive than the Colombian or Mexican drug lords in later generations.