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The Sumerians use opium, suggested by the fact that they have an ideogram for it which has been translated as HUL, meaning “joy” or “rejoicing
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Earliest historical record of the production of alcohol: the description of a brewery in an Egyptian papyrus.
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Approximate date of the supposed origin of the use of tea in China.
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Earlist historical evidence of the eating of poppy seeds among the Lake Dwellers on Switzerland.
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Back when the Olympics started, in Greece, people were know to eat exotic meats and drink "magic" potions (herbal infused drinks) in hopes that it makes them perform better. Ancient Greek athletes were naked when they competed, to display their physical prowess and also to pay homage to Zeus by showing him how they had trained their bodies to their physical peak.
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300 B.C. Theophrastus (371-287 B.C.), Greek naturalist and philosopher, records what has remained as the earlies undisputed reference to the use of poppy juice.
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Opium is widely used in China and the far East.
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The use of tobacco is introduced into Europe by Columbus and his crew returning
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A medieval Russian cure for drunkenness consisted in “taking a piece of pork, putting it secretly in a Jew’s bed for nine days, and then giving it to the drunkard in a pulverized form, who will turn away from drinking as a Jew would from pork.”
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Paracelsus (1490-1541) introduces laudanum, or tincture of opium, into the practice of medicine.
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John Rolf, the husband of the Indian princess Pocahontas, sends the first shipment of Virginia tobacco from Jamestown to England.
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Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire decreed the death penalty for smoking tobacco ,where ever there Sultan went on his travels or on a military expedition his halting-places were always distinguished by a terrible rise in executions. Even on the battlefield he was fond of surprising men in the act of smoking, he would punish them by beheading, hanging, quartering or crushing their hands and feed nevertheless, in spite of all the horrors and persecution the passion for smoking still persisted
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The “Act for the Encouraging of the Distillation of Brandy and Spirits from Corn” is enacted in England.
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In Luneberg, Germany, the penalty for smoking (tobacco) is death
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In Russia, Czar Michael Federovitch executes anyone on whom tobacco is found. Czar Alexei Mikhailovitch rules that anyone caught with tobacco should be tortured until he gave up the name of the supplier.
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Liquor licenses in Middlesex (England) are granted only to those who “would take oaths of allegiance and of belief in the King’s supremacy over the Church”
