Oh, Sugar, Sugar!

[Monte Davis]

I like to think that -- given the vagaries of trade and fashion -- there must have 
been *some* city in a remote corner of Europe where tobacco, caffeine, refined 
sugar, chocolate, and cheap distilled spirits all arrived more or less simultaneously. 
Talk about a BUZZ...!

Semi-seriously, when you think about Native Americans or any other group that 
was hit hard by "our drugs," remember that we'd done it to ourselves too: cf. 
Hogarth's Gin Lane series, or James I on the evil weed... which of course was a gift 
of the poor doomed Virginia "Indians," as chocolatl was of the Mexica (Aztecs).

There's a fine book called "Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of 
Europe, 900-1900" by Alfred Crosby (Cambridge UP 1986, ISBN 0-521-45690-8 pb.) He 
describes how our crops, livestock, weeds and pests fared from Iceland to the 
Azores, New England to New Zealand. He also makes the case that by being 
"ahead" in urban life, Eurasians had cultivated high-density diseases (and 
immunities) that would be their most powerful weapon against pre-urban peoples. 

It would be interesting to extend his POV to the process by which cultures 
encounter and establish tolerance for addictive/habituating drugs... has it been 
done? Andrew Weil maybe?