Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drugs in T2k

[Raellus]

Have they played a role in your campaign?

Alcoholic beverages are easy enough to make- the ingredients are widely available, and lots of people are familiar with fermentation as a process. I'm always running across pre-war Vodka and post-TDM local hooch in T2k campaigns.

Someone told me that Poland was Europe's biggest producer of tobacco. That struck me as strange, given what I thought I knew about tobacco and climate, but I never bothered to fact check it. In books and films about war (both fiction and non-fiction), cigarettes are treated as ersatz currency by soldiers. They used to be included in U.S. K-rats and other military rations as well, IIRC. I reckon a lot of soldiers would be jonesing for that sweet nicotine hit c.2000, increasing tobacco's value as a luxury good/means of exchange.

As for drugs, I imagine that marijuana could be grown in Europe, in greenhouses, if not outdoors. Cocaine and heroine, I'd imagine not. Smuggling links to Latin America and Asia would be more or less cut by the war, no?

I bet there'd be a black market for military-issue painkillers and sedatives, but they'd be increasingly hard to come by c.2000, I'd imagine.

LSD? I figure a professional chemist with access to the right chemicals could whip some up. How possible would that be by 2000, though? (The article that inspired this thread-)

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdk...top-taking-lsd

I included a pimp/drug dealer NPC in a Poland-based campaign, but I think I was vaguely circumspect when it came to describing his narcotics supply because I wasn't sure what drugs would realistically be available in the region c.2000.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2979

Share your alcohol, tobacco, and drug knowledge here. We won't ask you how you came by it, or judge.

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