It is reported in the book Opium the History that opium smoking arrived in North America with the first migration of the Chinese laborers who were addicted from the British expansionist policy of trade in opium. The first opium dens were contained within the Chinese community. But soon grew into iniquitous dives offering opium as well as gambling, prostitution and loan sharking.

“In 1874 Dr. J.P. Newman, Chaplain to US senate said of the Chinese, “they have come to us debilitated, they have come enervate by the influence of opium… We therefore bid them welcome, but we cannot bid them welcome as opium smokers,” (p. 194 Opium A History, by Martin Booth)

In 1868 a gambler in San Francisco called Clendenyn is reported to be the first white man to smoke opium, soon to be followed by many. The opium dens are thought to have been a haven for Caucasians who were shunned by formal white society. The opium dens were often seen as centers for criminal activities and referred to as dives or joints. The word dive is an abbreviation of divan. That means “a council room” in Oriental countries. Other meanings in the dictionary refer to a smoking room as well as a large sofa usually without arms. All references can be linked to opium dens.

There was a vast range in the size and accommodations offered by those who ran the opium dens. Some were elaborate houses that could accommodate as many as 24 opium smokers at a time while others were just rooms attached to Chinese laundry stores or lodging houses.

Booth states that opium reached its summit in 1883. It is reported that 208,152 lbs of smoking opium was imported into the U.S., mainly through the port of San Francisco. From the late 19th Century, opium dens evolved into what Booth suggested was “the birth place of the American drug subculture, a cosmopolitan fusion of Oriental and Occidental mores, myths and values.”

A jargon evolved within this culture that revolved around opium smoking. ‘The long draw’ was the ability to inhale an entire opium pill with one breath; ‘chefs’ prepared the opium pills. Pipes used to smoke the opium and the smoking habits were known as a ‘yen’ from the verb to ‘smoke’ in the Pecking dialect. This vocabulary especially popular with the literary circles who frequented the opium dens.

The mystical attraction of the opium dens was gaining wide spread attention. The “Chinese Opium Fiend” suggested opium dens were considered a “must see” for San Francisco’s tourist attraction. Tourists sent picture postcards home to friends and relatives depicting a variety of surroundings that one may encounter when visiting San Francisco’s many opium dens. The letters spoke of the opium smoking pipes and curious lounge-like positions of the smokers often in the hopes of embellishing their adventure.

Willard Farwell wrote about his impressions of the atmosphere within the opium dens as being so potent it was tangible to all five senses. He claimed you could see the opium smoke, feel the opium vapor, taste the opium-thick air, smell the opium smoke and even hear the opium smoker suck on his pipe bowl.

Writers were drawn to the opium dens in the hopes the opium would help free them from their inhibitions and allow them to have new experience to write about in more expressive ways. Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain are just two of the writers of the day who were drawn in by this lure. Mark Twain is said to have written that the juices from the poppy stems were so potent they could turn the stomach of a statue.

Barbara Hodgson suggests in her book Opium that opium smoking was sought after by a less affluent sector of society. This group also wanted to escape the constraints of their surroundings and enjoy the freedom to enter the fabled dimension that the opium offered them.

Proper society feared that this opiate attraction would create a widespread increase of opium dens. The attitude was reinforced by racial hatred. Stories base on this fear were written and published in the local papers. Many of the writers were accused of being bigoted in their descriptions of the opium dens.

Not all writers of the day chronicled the evils of opium smoking and not all writers dwelt on the opium dens within the Chinese community. Other writers of the day did chronical the number of opium dens in other parts of the cities who catered to Caucasians. The Hatchet Men by Richard Dillon refers to the fact that women as well as men were regular visitors to opium dens. He refers to one particular opium den in San Francisco that was noted as being frequented by women called Blind Annies. Inaccurate assumptions were being made suggesting any women found smoking in the opium dens was likely a prostitute. Opium, racism, sex and high society made great fuel for the tabloid press.

In 1875 and 1876 San Francisco and Virginia City passed an ordinance forbidding the smoking of “Opium, the possession opium or the paraphernalia needed to smoke it or organizing an opium den. However, only the dens that Caucasians frequented were shut down. The smaller dens catering to Chinese were ignored.

Ever inventive, white people simply set up new dens close to Chinese communities. Wealthy white people often set up private opium dens and bought their supplies from Chinese opium merchants. Martin Booth’s book Opium A History states that by the 1920’s most American cities are reported to having opium-smoking locations. Wealthy smokers, especially those connected to show business, were protected by their riches or position from arrested or shortages of opium. In Errol Flynn’s autobiography, “My Wicked, Wicked Ways, he describes in detail his smoking of opium in a den and insists opium improved his sexual capabilities.

Opium smoking became fashionable. Smokers colloquially know as “pipies” considered themselves a drug elite. In time smoking opium became more and more rare and less was smuggled because of its bulk.

Opium dens were not a North American phenomenon. Britain also had its share of opium dens. In Hodgson’s book Opium, it states opium smoking in Britain, “was confined to a higher level of society that had little to do with the ordinary opium eater”. She suggests that the “literary circle of the time, who included authors like Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle portrayed the East end of Chinatown called Lime house as the most mysterious place on earth.” A place that was constantly shrouded in fog and opium smoke and growing at a rate that would quickly spill over in to other segments of society. The sins that these authors spoke about within Lime house is questioned in Hodgson’s book. Hodgson questions how realistic some of the authors within the “literary circle of the day were in presenting an accurate account”. Virginia Berridge coauthor of Opium and the People (1981) provides statistics to show that the Chinese population in London then was very small, transient and quite undeserving of all the historic attention it received”.

By the Second World War few if any opium dens remained.