Opiates in many forms were very popular. Primary sources frequently discuss men going to Chinatowns to smoke opium. There were also assorted liquid "medicines" that contained opiates, and many women became addicted to these. When white society saw young people becoming addicted to opium in the mid 1870s - and in partial response to growing anti-Chinese/anti-immigrant rhetoric local governments began to pass anti-opium laws (but "medicines" remained popular).

There was also Fitz Hugh Ludlow who wrote The Hasheesh Eater in 1857. He toured the West in the early 1860s advocating the virtues of hasheesh.

Sharon Lowe wrote a great article on drug use for a book I co-edited: Comstock Women: The Making of a Western Community (1998).

edited to add dates to first and second paragraphs.