It's one of those "just so stories" that people love because it ties everything into a nice bow.
I'm not saying it's irrelevant, but if the Opium Wars never happened does anyone believe they wouldn't be doing the same thing anyways?
Making money and then feeling patriotic that you are helping China slowly destroy America because of what they did in the past.
I'll bet a lot of people involved in the fentanyl trade don't even know much about the Opium Wars anyways.
It's like claiming smuggling of liquor from Canada to the US during prohibition was Canada's attempt at getting back at the US for the War of 1812. Nahh.. they just wanted to make a crap ton of money.
I’ll bet you aren’t familiar with the grammar school Chinese history curriculum.
Besides, as a modern kingpin, think with scale! Recruiting goes much smoother when you can sell it as “you’re a soldier for the country, fighting an undercover war”. How many companies have “make money” as their mission statement besides Amazon?
The comparison to Canada and prohibition doesn’t pass the smell test. Given that the war of 1812 wasn’t predicated on getting the Canadians into a drunken stupor as a tactic of economic warfare.
Oh, and as far as USA vs British East India Company, it’s all “the west” in the end.
Since we’re speculating freely anyway, why does the revenge have to come in the same form as the initial affront?
(A tael was a unit of Chinese silver bullion; heads references the death penalty for drug running, which applied only to Chinese subjects for most of the opium years.)