I have to keep reminding myself that China’s drug policy has its origin in historical trauma and the opinions of its people reflects that. They really think weed is like heroin or something it’s tragic.
Gonna go smoke some weed about it
I have to keep reminding myself that China’s drug policy has its origin in historical trauma and the opinions of its people reflects that. They really think weed is like heroin or something it’s tragic.
Gonna go smoke some weed about it
Somewhat off tangent, but I think the West has an hedonistic drive when it comes to drugs. The biggest example I could think of is tobacco. Tobacco started out as something that Indigenous people on Turtle Island smoked as part of a religious or civil ceremony. The modern recreational use only happened when European settlers began growing the crop as a cash crop, presumably to sell to other Europeans who smoke tobacco in order to cope with the fact that they live in the dumpster part of Asia called Europe. Peyote is a more modern example. For millennia, various Indigenous peoples use peyote as part of religious ceremony that is treated with respect and gravitas. But once hippy settlers found out about peyote, it became just another recreational hallucinogen to use and abuse.
I believe this is the giant cultural divide. East Asians (since it’s not only China that has a problem with most recreational drugs) find recreational use of drugs (or at least Western recreational use of drugs since every culture has alcoholic beverages as part of their cuisine) completely off putting. Going “uh aktually, weed isn’t that bad for you compared with cigs” misses the point.
Smoking tobacco is tremendously widespread and is absolutely recreational. Tea and increasingly coffee are also widespread and are absolutely recreational drugs.
Ephedra was used relatively extensively in the past for energy and focus, not really distinct to how uni students use speed or modafinil.
Everywhere has a history of drug use, the backlash is a recent historical thing and it’s selective as hell.
And I believe humans have been getting high for fun longer than we’ve been humans. All great apes consume mind altering substances recreationally, we’re not remotely special in that regard. Putting restrictions on who can get high and when is something that only occurred after humans had invented domination systems, and much like restrictions on who can have sex with whom and when, they exist only to strengthen the control of the ruling class.