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Summary: Drug Prohibition In China

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British for flooding the Chinese market with opium. In the end, it was the herculean effort by the PRC government in the 1950s that succeeded in weeding out the opium problem in China. She attributed the success of the PRC government to its incorruptibility, determination, and also a lockdown in international trade that stemmed the inflow of drugs to China. Important to note too that for both Li Yangfan and Xia Guomei, the implied understanding is that China’s drug problems were always a result of negative foreign influences. Xia Guomei lamented how today’s China is “surrounded on all four directions by drugs.” There is a tendency for Chinese scholars to downplay the autonomy of Chinese themselves in contributing to their own drug problems. …show more content…

Not only is this characterization far from the truth, it also motivates the wrong policy for China’s drug problems.
The way drugs are perceived in China’s history has significantly shaped the public discourse on drug prohibition. A significant portion of Chinese literature approaches substance abuse as a crime or public security crisis, amongst which many are published by scholars from the various police colleges and law enforcement agencies in China. For example, Zhang Li et. al., from the People’s Public Security University of China (zhongguo renmin gongan daxue), the most prestigious police college in China, discussed how the rising consumption of synthetic drugs is responsible for behaviours resulting in damages to public property, self-mutilation, physical injuries to others, recklessness, and traffic accidents. Interesting to note would be how the same analysis could be applied to alcohol, which often do not receive the same level of attention from the Chinese law enforcement authorities as …show more content…

As pointed out by David Courtwright, the spread of psychoactive substances, including tea, coffee, coca, spirits, opium, and tobacco, was a worldwide phenomenon which began in the 15th century. Virgiania Berridge and Griffith Edwards pointed out that before the first Pharmacy Act in 1868, opium was freely traded in Britain, just like any other commodity. It was transported into Britain via commercial channels, and widely enjoyed by a large section of society ranging from the

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