Lotan's venture into opium smuggling was doomed from the start (#2 of series of 6 related episodes)

Lotan's venture into opium smuggling was doomed from the start (#2 of series of 6 related episodes)

Author: www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com) May 18, 2026 Duration: 9:57
Offbeat Oregon History podcast
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The problem with smuggling opium back in the 1890s was, although the stuff was still legal, it was taxed very heavily. That meant smuggling the stuff in without paying the tax was tantamount to stealing money from the government. And the government, as always, took money very seriously ... so if you were going to smuggle it, you needed a real cracker-jack team. And the Blum-Dunbar gang was a lot of things, but 'cracker-jack' — or even just 'competent' — wasn't one of them. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2408a-1202d.james-lotan-opium-king-661.161.html)

The Offbeat Oregon History Podcast is a daily service from the Offbeat Oregon History newspaper column. Each weekday morning, a strange-but-true story from Oregon's history from the archives of the column is uploaded. An exploding whale, a few shockingly scary cults, a 19th-century serial killer, several very naughty ladies, a handful of solid-brass con artists and some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of the universe. Source citations are included with the text version on the Web site at https://offbeatoregon.com.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

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