That's a very dramatic narrative. As if the English or the Chinese were united among themselves. As if Chinese traders and smugglers didn't collude, or that the opium ban was a purely moral one and not commercial.
Somewhere inbetween those stories lies the truth. However as with the current crisis, it was the English that invaded with their Navy, that would make them the aggressor and hence the bad-~guy~human. Taking todays value system and applying it to events that happened some 180 years ago.