POD 136: [VIDEO] Patrick Phillips on the Japanese conspiracy to distribute opium laced cigarettes in China
Added 2025-11-30 19:24:22 +0000 UTCIn this episode I talk with tobacco researcher Patrick Phillips about his new book "Tobacco of the Emperor" which investigates the history of Japanese cigarettes and other tobacco products. We discuss historical claims of etorphine-laced cigarettes, the opium wars, and the curiously under-researched (at least in English?) claim that millions of Chinese people were tricked into opiate addition with opium-laced Golden Bat cigarettes.
Patrick Phillips is a tobacco researcher and militaria collector who served as a combat engineer in the US army. After leaving the army, he attended nursing school and currently works as a registered nurse in Missouri. His book Tobacco of the emperor is a comprehensive analysis of the history of Japanese tobacco.
Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression
Kenji Doihara: Japanese General and Convicted War Criminal
Kenji Doihara: Beyond the Surface!
How Imperial Japan Created a Vast Drug Empire to Destroy China
The Japanese cigarette brand that was weaponised against Chinese smokers in wartime
Monase bottle replica by www.prettydrugthings.com
Comments
what about the bobba/milkthea, sounds like a similar concept?
Stefan
2026-01-06 06:11:27 +0000 UTCThe lack of concrete evidence on the opium cigarettes makes me suspect that Kenji Doihara was accused of the conspiracy to give a sense of justice for the Chinese who had been victims of Japan's war crimes. The Japanese emperor Hirohito was never prosecuted on anything - his extreamily loyal underlings took all of the responsibility & punishment for the war. Further, some really horrific war criminals were given immunity in a cover-up, because the U.S. goverment wanted them in the U.S. military's own science programs. So perhaps the real conspiracy was that there was no opium cigarette conspiracy & Kenji Doihara - whose other crimes were probably enough for criminal conviction anyway - was presented as the evil mastermind in that fabricated story, so as to take the public's attention away from how certain war criminals were being helped to escape justice & punishment. Though: if the opium cigarettes would've been such a massive commercial hit as it was claimed to had been, then surely there must exist at least some paper trails of it! It would've been legal sales so there wouldn't even had been that much need to launder money (only when buying the opium). I have no idea how accounting & taxes was practically done in the imperial Japan, or how publicly available such historical records are today, but surely the need to track money existed back then too. It's hard to imagine that a massive influx of new revenue wouldn't show up somewhere in such records.
Honey-el
2025-12-11 09:16:50 +0000 UTCA lot of the history of the state Japanese opium monopoly in Manchuria is covered in this excellent book by the academic Mark Driscoll 'Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan's Imperialism, 1895-1945' https://www.dukeupress.edu/absolute-erotic-absolute-grotesque
Royce Zheng
2025-12-10 13:56:49 +0000 UTCThe intro is fucking hysterical LMAO
Matthew Aragón
2025-12-09 03:24:00 +0000 UTCAs much as I would love to get a bottle of Bayer heroin, I think I would have a hard time not trying at least a little bit.
Cheminterested
2025-12-08 21:55:54 +0000 UTCNot a primary reference but this reminds me of a movie I saw in Chengdu while visiting my friend 2011 The Flowers of War - Wikipedia https://share.google/OTKmp9DhKGww6KhuX
Yvonne DePorre
2025-12-05 05:05:27 +0000 UTCEtorphine - crazy morphinan opioid! I wonder how they came up with that structure. Mostly fascinating - I did not think there were any extremely potent morphinan opioids. I thought the ultra potent were only in the phenyl-piperidine opioid class. Ex - fentanyl, sufentanyl and I guess carfentanyl is the most potent I have heard of. Carfentanyl is also historically for large animal veterinary use although I don't think it is a currently used product even in that scope. Interesting (per widipedia) there is a specific potent antagonist supplied with the etorphine veterinary drug, stating that naloxone is inadequate for reversal.
david
2025-12-04 02:24:20 +0000 UTCso it's basically a race now to see who can buy a pack of cigs off ebay that actually has the opium? what a crazy story. i also struggle to believe those numbers!
Eli Gaultney
2025-12-03 18:17:16 +0000 UTCDaaaaam that was nice
Tyler Stark
2025-12-01 22:04:47 +0000 UTCI love Hamilton. I emailed him asking if he wanted to interview me, I was a dark web "drug lord" according to the feds lol. I think it would make for killer content to hear my story.
Matt W.
2025-12-01 10:37:12 +0000 UTCAwesome interview, love to hear it
Helmer
2025-12-01 08:09:37 +0000 UTCHamilton should interview ME next.
caesaroftampa
2025-12-01 06:49:44 +0000 UTCActually turns out pethidine aka Demoral was the first synthetic opiate they created and seems to have been used to overcome the morphine shortage caused by allied embargo in the 30’s. Methadone was also developed around the same time but was shelved because of sides effects and wasn’t really used as a medicine until the 50’s after the US acquired IG Faben’s documents. Interesting that Demoral is considered more euphoric than morphine while methadone is considered less so. I wonder how the medical community establishes a euphoric effect…it seems highly subjective, though opiate users tend to agree.
Edwina Tollstoy
2025-11-30 20:28:06 +0000 UTCOne interesting thing about Germany in WW2 is they created methadone as a response to a morphine embargo by the allies who reasoned that you can’t fight a successful war without an effective painkiller.
Edwina Tollstoy
2025-11-30 20:08:48 +0000 UTCI'm belt sanding my deck. I have high hopes for us both.
CSN
2025-11-30 19:34:44 +0000 UTCUnless the dose of psilocybin is quite low I could imagine this live stream could turn out to be a mild disaster, but hey at least it might inform somebody about choosing a good setting for a trip lol
Bobby Foreman
2025-11-30 19:30:49 +0000 UTC
