Not making it up, all the Chinese imports brought their opium with them, a big population living in california.
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My point was simpler, that opium dens were neither originated in nor unique to CA,
i.e., not an example of CA weirdness. If opium addiction came to CA with the Chinese, alcoholism (as we call it now) came to CA from the US and EuroLand. For CA weirdness, try, e.g.,
this bit of lunacy.
There was, indeed, a significant wave of immigration from China to CA toward the end of the Gold Rush - the reason for which they came - and many of the workers on the western portion, the Central Pacific, of the Transcontinental Railroad were Chinese. A few of my classmates in high school were probably descendants of that immigration wave (and others may have been descendants of Spanish-Mexican settlers who were in CA before it became US territory).