April 29, 1898, 10 Downing Street, London, England.

"Mr. Prime Minister, the number of new addicts has been counted...... There are about 1,463,300 people in the country......" As the secretary's reports became more and more detailed, the faces of the cabinet ministers in the office instantly became gloomy.

"Check! Check it out for me! Be sure to find out who really made these damn Earl Grey cigarettes! ”

British Prime Minister Salisbury roared in front of many cabinet members in his official residence.

I don't know when a box of inconspicuous cigarettes has gradually spread in the British Isles, the first time to try to smoke this kind of Earl Grey cigarettes smokers often feel that the taste of this cigarette is different, basically after smoking Earl Count will not be interested in trying other brands of cigarettes, because of this "unique" advantage, gradually the entire British cigarette market sellers have begun to favor this brand of cigarettes, and at the same time more and more drive the spread of Earl Grey cigarettes in the UK.

It was discovered that the real harm of this Earl cigarette was due to a coincidence, at the beginning of this year, a British colonial army in West Africa arrived a few days late because of the replenishment of the supply ships, and as a result, many British soldiers in the local area fell "sick" at once. It wasn't until the military doctors of the local colonies who tossed around with the army for a long time that they found out that it was the soldiers' "addiction to smoking", and the same thing happened almost everywhere in Britain, and many British families gradually went bankrupt on a large scale because of the use of earls, separated relatives, and family breakdowns abounded. What's even worse is that this kind of Earl Grey cigarettes seriously endanger the health of smokers, and many commanders of the British colonial army found that their soldiers became more and more lethargic, sluggish, and even lost their basic sense of direction, and these incidents gradually attracted the attention of Downing Street.

It wasn't until later that British medical personnel examined the Earl Grey cigarettes and found an addictive chemical similar to opium. On February 1 of that year, the British began to clean up Earl Earl cigarettes on a large scale on the market, and severely cracked down on related sales channels, which caused a lot of losses to the local downline members of the Serris Intelligence Department. Shortly thereafter, the British government issued a decree prohibiting the smoking and trading of Earl Count cigarettes, and sent all private smokers to hospitals for drug rehabilitation.

By early April, hospitals across Britain were overcrowded, and hospitals were filled with "smokers" who had been sent for compulsory drug rehabilitation. Despite such a series of measures, the results of the feedback still dealt a severe blow to the British, and various hospitals found that after cutting off the supply of earl cigarettes to drug addicts, many people had irreversible complications, and even many drug addicts committed suicide directly because they could not bear the pain of this forced drug rehabilitation.

Worse still, many overseas British colonial troops were thrown into chaos by the sudden cutting off of the supply of this earl's cigarette, and the consequences of being in the hands of a group of addicts can be imagined. Since April 17, several British colonial troops in West Africa and the Mediterranean have been in rebellion, and the British colonial soldiers stationed in Gibraltar even couldn't restrain the tyranny of being forced to stop smoking in their hearts, so they directly used the cannons in the fortress to bombard the merchant ships of various countries sailing on the strait.

The "Gibraltar Shelling Incident," which occurred at noon on 22 April, instantly caused a sensation in all countries around the world, and at the same time, it also made the British Government fall into diplomatic passivity again and again, and severely disgraced in front of the international community.

David Beatty, the British Cabinet of Ministers of the Navy, frowned and said, "The most important thing now is the problem of smoking addiction in the army!" A small percentage of the soldiers in the colony garrisons had smoked this earl's cigarette before, and even many of the senior officers were addicted to it, and the situation was very serious......"

"Damn it! Where did these colonial soldiers get their earl cigarettes? Prime Minister Salisbury questioned.

After glancing at the Prime Minister in front of him, Granville said slowly, "According to the survey, not only in China, but also in Iran, India, and Burma...... It's easy for the soldiers to buy ......"

"Hell!" Salisbury gritted his teeth.

"Give me orders in the colonies to strictly prohibit the sale of earl cigarettes! All merchants who sell Piaget cigarettes will be heavily fined! No! Seal them all up for me! We don't have time to take it slowly! ”

……

At the same time that the British were cracking down on the domestic drug trade, the Orientals on the other side of the globe were doing the same.

May 2, 1898, Seris, Republic of China, Beijing, Zhongnanhai.

"Exposed, exposed, has everything been dealt with?" Chen Zeyu waved his hand and asked nonchalantly.

"Once everything is dealt with, the drug sales in the British mainland have been taken over by the Irish Resistance until then, and the British will find that all the clues point to the Thais in Indochina......"

Jia Deyao, director of the Special Countermeasures Department of the Ministry of Intelligence, said respectfully.

Chen Zeyu nodded and said, "That's okay, this matter will end here...... By the way, use channels to publicize the few British traders who provide opium raw materials. ”

"Yes, Führer." Jia Deyao stepped back from the side......

The golden sales era of Hai Yin is over, and Chen Zeyu breathes a sigh of relief in his heart while feeling a little pity.

After several years of drug transfer trade, the Ceris government has unsurprisingly obtained a "special trade budget" of nearly 7 million pounds per year, and the accumulation of these amounts has already become a huge figure in five years, a full 34.2 million pounds, which is equivalent to the cost of 30 of the latest domestic Ryukyu-class battleships.

At the same time, because the previous "acquisition action" cut off the opium raw materials imported by British merchants to the mainland, many opium parlors left over from the former Qing Dynasty in China suddenly became sluggish. Even so, Chen Zeyu still did not let go of these former opium dealers, and under the newly promulgated "Sentencing Standards for Drug Trafficking Crimes" in China, these filthy and despicable businessmen obviously escaped the punishment of death -- according to Article 4 of the promulgated law, anyone who smuggles, sells, transports, or manufactures more than 200 grams of opium in Seris will be executed and all personal property confiscated.

I have to say that in this era, the opium hall is definitely the most profitable industry, and under the strong crackdown of the armed police force of the Republic, batches of real money have been gradually excavated by the government like Centrino cars on the assembly line. In particular, although the "Fushouguan" in Liangguang, Fujian, and other provinces experienced a period of depression for quite a short time, the wealth they finally seized still severely frightened the local law enforcement departments -- 8.75 million taels of silver, equivalent to 27 million Chinese yuan, were confiscated from opium merchants in Guangzhou alone, and the total amount confiscated from illegal drug gains in the entire republic reached a staggering 531.7 million Chinese yuan, which is equivalent to the government's fiscal and tax revenue for more than half a year of the current republic.

Inevitably, there was a slight amount of violence by law enforcement in various parts of the country, as the bloodshed that followed the tough resistance appeared from time to time in Seris's major national newspapers. In this regard, the domestic drug law enforcement agencies have been carrying out the steps of raiding homes, and there is no mercy to speak of, including Chen Zeyu himself, who has no objection to their approach.

As a matter of fact, for the "tragic experience" of these former opium parlor operators, whether at the top or among the people, all strata in the country applauded, and none of these opium parlors in the former Qing Dynasty were ruined by the local people's families, and for these filthy businessmen who had done all the bad things, it was too cheap for them to dispose of just one bullet.