Popular and elite attitudes towards the production and trade in opium and its derivatives have undergone drastic changes over the last two hundred years. Introduced to the region as a cash crop by colonial powers controlling its international trade routes, opium had become by the mid 20th century a regular feature both of agricultural production –often under under government regulation if not instigation–, as well as recreational drug use of the well-heeled sections of society throughout the region but especially in Iran, Afghanistan, and in that part of the British Raj that comprises the territory of today’s Pakistan.