China Sees a Den of Indignity in Perfume

Opium has been banned once again in China because of its harmful effect on society, but this time it’s not the drug.

It’s the perfume.

Fearful that the name might lead to the “spiritual pollution” of Chinese youth--and mindful of the heavy price China paid in the Opium Wars and addictions of the 19th century--the government has ordered the popular Yves Saint Laurent fragrance off the shelves of department stores across the country.

In Paris, a spokeswoman for the French couturier, which is owned by fashion giant Gucci, declined to comment Wednesday, saying that a statement would be issued in the next few days.

The ban went into effect last month after customers in this bustling southwestern city, the capital of Sichuan province, complained about the label.

“The name ‘Opium’ humiliates Chinese dignity,” said Wang Yueli, a perfume saleswoman at one of Chengdu’s poshest department stores. “And since it’s the name of a drug, that’s also bad, because we’re trying to wipe out drugs.”

After an investigation, the State Industry and Commerce Bureau yanked Opium’s product license in the world’s most populous nation--and the fragrance’s biggest potential market.

“From any perspective, [the name] may produce negative social effects,” the bureau said in its decision, reported this week in the official Business Daily.

A representative of Guohangxin Economy & Technology Co., YSL’s distributor in China, confirmed the ban, saying, “All we can do now is obey the law.” She added that the company may explore the possibility of selling the perfume under another name but that such a change “would be a big undertaking.”

Enforcement of the ban seemed spotty this week. The perfume was still being hawked in a Shanghai department store, and a Beijing saleswoman brought out two bottles from under the counter. “This is for the mature, sexy woman,” she explained before a co-worker told her to put the bottles away.

Opium, one of the world’s top-selling perfumes, was launched in 1978 amid criticism in the West that its name glorified drug use. It was a lodestone for the previous owner of the YSL line, Sanofi Beaute, whose collection of perfumes, built around the Opium label, hauled in more than half a billion dollars in 1998.

In China, well-heeled customers fork over more than $120--greater than the average monthly wage, and more than one would pay in Los Angeles--for a 100-milliliter bottle, or about 3 1/2 ounces.

State media said the tempest in a perfume bottle began when consumers in Chengdu raised a stink two years ago. “Quite a few” complained that Opium “created spiritual pollution for the younger generation” and that the name made them feel “uneasy” and “worried,” the Business Daily reported.

After unsuccessful attempts to stop the fragrance from being sold locally, commercial authorities in Chengdu put the central government on the scent, asking the State Industry and Commerce Bureau to “drive Opium out of the country.”

The language is redolent of China’s aggressive campaign to stamp out illegal drugs since the People’s Republic was founded in 1949. Leaders were haunted by images of glassy-eyed addicts in smoke-filled dens and memories of a weak and ineffectual China unable to defend itself against British opium merchants in the mid-1800s.

In its early years, the Communist government largely succeeded in its campaign to eradicate drug abuse. But in the past two decades, illegal drugs have staged a comeback, particularly in southern and southwestern China.

Still, connecting opium’s historical associations with a modern perfume of the same name seems rather a stretch to some.

“I’ve used this perfume before and like it a lot,” Wu Mei, 30, said as she shopped on the cosmetics floor in an upscale Beijing department store. “Why can you sell Poison,” she asked, referring to the popular Christian Dior fragrance, “but not Opium?”