Public opinion reflects a nuanced view on US-China relations concerning dependency on pharmaceuticals and technology, with a mix of skepticism and concern about national security and the effectiveness of both countries' drug policies. While there are fears of a dystopian future driven by technology and misinformation, many advocate for cooperation over confrontation, emphasizing the complexities of interdependence and the need for honest discussion about both nations' policies.

United States

China

I've been traveling to China for 25 years. In 2005 I went to a vendors wedding and became friends with a young man who was the groom's best friend. A year later I asked about him and was told he was caught with a small amount of cannabis. He was sent to prison and was dead 3 weeks later.

After the opium wars the Chinese are serious af about illegal drugs. This poor kid was 24.

Disastrous-Cake-7194

Tons of braindead takes here that amount to "China Bad" while not actually answering anything; par for the course for Reddit.

The reality is that China’s strong anti-drug stance is more about historical trauma than just government policy. The Opium Wars left a deep scar on the country, with addiction affecting up to 10% of the population and playing a huge role in what’s now called the "Century of Humiliation." To help you imagine how bad it was, just picture 1/10th of current day America addicted to meth, with a non functioning government, while the entire country was being carved up by the rest of Europe for resource extraction and killing your people whenever it pleased them. It would be a living hell, and would affect you and everyone you know for generations. For them, that history isn’t just remembered—it’s been drilled into the national consciousness and reinforced through strict laws and propaganda.

But laws aside, there’s also a major cultural stigma. Getting caught with drugs isn’t just a legal problem; it can ruin your reputation, affect your family, and make you a social outcast. Just see the reaction Jackie Chan's son got when he was caught smoking marijuana. Not only did he suffer, he brought a huge amount of shame to his family, and they were publicly lambasted for it. It's still the only major thing he's remembered for. 

Compare that to the U.S., where drug use has been glamorized for decades—think the counterculture of the '60s, rock stars, rap lyrics, and Hollywood movies.

At the end of the day, history shapes how societies see drugs. Both the US and China have dealt with drug problems, but the root of their reactions and attitudes are hugely different.

doryoboe

The war on drugs also wasn’t really a war on drugs - it happened at the end of the Civil Rights Movement because it was the tool used to end it. 

The two main groups of people who were pushing for civil rights were “hippies,” and Black people. The hippies were already smoking weed so once it was criminalized the US govt could arrest civil rights leaders from the hippies. The CIA has admitted to introducing crack to Black neighborhoods so Black civil rights leaders were taken out of the picture. With both fronts’ leadership decimated the movement stagnated. 

One thing led to another now we have Trump as President.

Apart_Tumbleweed_948

By some estimates, China executed 10,000 people a year,  which is probably a big deterrent.

FenisDembo82

Chinese are cool on many things, but not drugs, they will literally kill you for drug-related crimes.  

If they catch you with 50 grams or more of Cocaine or Meth, you are dead.  

If they catch you with 100 grams or more of Morphine, you are dead.

CanadianGangsta

Weird how somehow China can somehow be winning the war on drugs

Yet somehow the US is claiming most fentanyl is coming from China 

So I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the Chinese government is in it’s usual lying ass bull shit propaganda machine 

Look at Portugal tho, they stopped fighting with drugs, gave them out for free and free safe drug use sites most people just got sober lol

SufficientWhile5450

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.” [Source](https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-anti-left-anti-black-war-on-drugs-2019-7?op=1)

~~If~~ It was never about drugs.

TentacularSneeze

Obaddies

China actually wanted to get rid of the drugs where as the cia, dea, and fbi thrive off of it continuously fucking over our people.  Private owned prisons are exploiting the people locked up for drugs and many other things for basically free labor.  

Tl;dr too much money in it for our corrupt government.

The_Boy_Keith

China claims to have zero homosexuality too.  They lie

DrMindbendersMonocle

1: Human rights can be pesky with dealing with drugs.

2: You can still get drugs in China. You just need to be connected in the party to avoid getting in trouble.

TheNinjaDC

I don't know if it worked or not in China, but I'm willing to bet they don't have a government agency pumping drugs into inner cities in order to use it as an excuse to destabilize civil rights movements and to supply and endless supply of free labor for the for-profit prison complex.


They'd also probably just execute the Sacklers.

NeilDegrassiHighson

It didn’t work and it won’t ever work. They’re just far more brutal in their handling of it and way more able to watch/punish their population. So it goes further underground and further out from the cities.

You can’t win a “war” on an inanimate thing. Especially one that people actively and innately want. And the further you illegalise the drugs, the worse the people that are selling them and the more vested interest that they have in getting people to try newer and harder drugs.

The fastest way to win the “war”, is to just not have a war. The best solution, that no parasitic politician will ever consider, is to make your populace happy and content enough that they don’t need the “escape your life drugs” and then legalise the “enhance your life” drugs. 

Or you wholesale legalise everything (under sensible, temporary restrictions), that way your law enforcement has actual visibility and control over whats sold, by who, to who and where. You can regulate the quality of supply (so shit like Krokodil never becomes available) And you can use some of the massive tax income to try and help the people who’re on the strong shit. And those people can actually seek help, without fear of being imprisoned.

Keeping it illegal forces people into contact with criminals that want them hooked on everything (the true gateways are misery and the dealer), puts control in the hands of the criminals rather than law enforcement and pumps vast quantities of money into the accounts of scumbags. It’s a totally counter productive “solution”. It’s like trying to remove an ingrown nail with a hammer, rather than just treating the cause. Even if you get rid of this one, there’ll just be another following it and now your toe is broken as well.

Klatterbyne

Because China tends to lie about everything politically. Remember zero covid deaths?

NeverGrace2

Lots of answers in here from people whose entire exposure to China and its culture is US media.

redpetra

OP this question is better asked in r/askchina or r/chinalife. Reading the responses here everyone is parroting some form or other of anti-chinese propaganda. Im a stoner and have spent some time in China, my wife is chinese (also a stoner), although we dont live there. 

China’s war on drugs happened a LONG time ago. It’s called the opium wars. And it’s safe to say the drugs unequivocally lost. Because of this drugs are seen as something that can rip apart their well manicured society. At one point drugs brought the nation to the lowest low it’s ever been to. Even today on chinese social media they see pictures of places in the US like skid row and kensington and see these as examples of how drugs tear apart society. Ofc it’s not really that simple, the drugs in our society (US) is more symptomatic of a greater issue with our economic and mental health care systems. But i digress.

People in china see drugs as weakness and moral failure. We just dont have that kind of fervor about it here in the west because it’s not our cultural history. Here we’ve seen people who have done drugs go on to do amazing things. This is the complete opposite in china. If someone in a position of power and fame publicly is found to have done drugs (even a little bit of weed) they will be shunned by the public universally. They dont need a modern war on drugs because the society already has it internally programmed from history.

FatMoFoSho

1. Did it?

2. Same reason Covid lockdowns somewhat worked in China. They barricaded people in their homes and shot them if they resisted. They don’t have lengthy appeal processes. They don’t have a justice system that largely favors the accused. They’re a brutal authoritarian state that puts down dissent with extreme violence.

Crosscourt_splat

The death penalty works wonders..no bargaining.

davidinkorea

Because we had to follow ROE to protect our image and China didn't, also China can dish out harsher punishment, and I don't know about China but most of our war has to happen in another country making it much more difficult

solodsnake661

Because the war on drugs was only meant to target and suppress certain populations.

They targeted crack in black and Latino communities.  But wealthy whites were allowed to use cocaine with impunity. 

So really, selective enforcement was the issue.

idog99

When you have the whole country being run by foreign drug cartels from Britain for a century, they take proper care of those sponsoring those terrorists.

brazucadomundo

You can still buy drugs in China but the punishment is severe if you get caught

cryptolyme

icandothisalldayson

If you get caught with weed you get life in prison in China lol

dixilla

Mallardware

The USA has a federal agency dedicated to regulating the  internal drug supply, and an agency that depends on drug trafficking to be funded properly. The Chinese state is probably trying to limit drug trafficking into their country.

erlkonigk

The US makes too much money on drugs to actually fight them.

bindermichi

Prob partly because their national intelligence service didnt spend decades funding and supporting drug cartels and separatism in neighboring countries

Charming_Beyond3639

-cmram28

The war on drugs in America was just one of the unwinnable wars that America starts for political purposes. War on communism, drugs, terrorism...

The war on drugs was very successful in populating prisons with lower socioeconomic class people, especially ones of color.

nimkeenator

China's government doesnt actively help bring drugs into their country

Puzzleheaded_Host413

China does not have the 4th amendment. They will go into a bar, piss test everyone, and arrest those that fail .

adfuel

SXTY82

It worked because

1. Drug dealers are kind of scared of the death penalty  
2. China lies about its stats

AllUrUpsAreBelong2Us

Because the USA won’t kill you for mom and dad plus your kids it call 3 generations of punishment and while  Moe was in charge that’s how opium was combated, and then there’s the fact that lots of people in china do take drugs it doesn’t make it onto the media because the party doesn’t want to have a failure on it record

deathtiki

Because China punishes everyone equally.

In USA, the war on drugs is mainly waged on minorities and the poor. Middle-class and white folks have always been able to do whatever they want. Don't even get me started on the rich &amp; famous.

randomstriker

The simple answer is that 1. China's leadership decided they actually want to stop drug use (well, western "drug" use?) 2. Authoritarian regimes have no impediments to achieving their goals, like public outcry, foreign image impact, from ignoring anything like human rights.

Gross oversimplification,  but,  that's my take. I don't agree with it,  but when anyone who disagrees with you can just be shot,  things get done quickly.

ZephRyder

[deleted]

We don’t kill the offender and harvest their organs. Not joking unfortunately

brokenbyanangel

It didn’t. They just executed anyone using.  If you want to look at a successful model. Look at Portugal. Made all drugs legal and focused on treatment.

Siesta13

China locked people in their homes during the outbreak and never reported real numbers. 

What do you think is the answer to this question?

Iswaterreallywet

china's strict laws keep drug use less visible but they still have drug problems.  By no real means did they 'win' the war in drugs.

FlashFiringAI

Because they actually mean it in china. In the USA it was quite literally just to fill jails with petty ownership charges for easy slave labor while they largely ignored the larger distribution issue bc without distributors, they can’t easily fill Jails for cheap slave labor to boost the economy.

It’s a lot easier when you execute people for having an eighth.

Yikesitsven

Ok_Initiative2069

China didn’t just say no to drugs, they said No, Thank You.

golfergoblin

Because the war on drugs, in the US, was never about drugs. It was about punishing political enemies and minorities.

“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968…had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people…We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be black, but by getting the public to associate…blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing (it)… we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon

GeekyGamer49

Because China needed the war on drugs to discourage drug use, and the US needed the war on drugs to put Black people in prison.

carry_the_way

Because in the US it was actually the war on black people. 

HamBroth

Idk, but the fact cannabis is still a schedule 1, when coke, meth, and opiates are schedule 2 is insane in 2025.

People have no faith cause of bureaucracy, and its inability to be not be exploited and/or simply inconsistent in regard to modern legality. Not to mention the roots of the war on drugs in tandem.

LitterlyUnhinged

In China they execute you 

In the US, well…..  it’s kind of a joke

SeattleBrother75

China kills the drug ridden before drugs can kill them

KeeperOfTheChips

Because our government was creating the drugs and distributing them

WokeUpIAmStillAlive

Alternativelyawkward

Because Chinese drugs addicts are forced to  quit cold turkey. If that doesn't work after a few tries the addict "disappears" !

visitor987

China ships fentanyl to Canda and the US, then it's transported to Mexico. The "war on drugs" was never about stopping drug trafficking.

One-Garlic5431

I know most are saying it is due to harsh penalties, but I don’t believe that for a second.  Addicts are fucking skilled at hiding addiction.  Their state news followed suit.

Mattturley

Because Chinese people have no individual rights or protections from anything their government wants to do to them. 

Shit, the CCP will steal your organs if you are  politically opposed to them, like they did with Falung Dafa members 

China's war on drugs was an actual war on drugs. The US's war on drugs was for a very long time just another way to lock up black people and Mexicans. Not an actual war on drugs.

dabrams1988

Dry_System9339

Because China is a dictatorship who can quietly execute users without having to worry about pesky details like human rights and due process.

Smooth-Apartment-856

China is a dictator ship and has been for a while, the US isn't despite media fear mongering.

Piemaster113

Because if you fuck around in China, you will disappear and your organs will get harvested.  

In the US, you'll be given a blanket and a bag of needles.

tlrmln

Because in the US, the CIA was actively distributing drugs into the country.

ShakeWeightMyDick

Clyde6699

Key-Candle8141

Dependent_Remove_326

Executions. China did them, US not so much. Neither had total success.

ReporterOther2179

Because they cut your fucking head off. 

Jealous-Lawyer7512

Cause their judicial system is hard core - their prisons are BRUTAL… and they send people like drug dealers (and ethnic minorities)  to basically concentration camps for ‘retraining.’

Ellen6723

china’s “war on drugs” is like super harsh, like they got death penalty for traffickers and stuff. in the 2000s they cracked down hard with police raids and strict laws, so maybe fear plays a big role? but in the USA, the war on drugs been going on since like nixon and its all about mass arrests and privatized prisons, which just made things worse? also, china’s goverment control is way tighter, they can enforce stuff top-down without pushback. 

another thing, china’s society is more collective, so people might obey rules more to avoid shame or punishment. but in the US, individualism is huge, so people rebel or dont trust the system. plus, the opioid crisis in america was fueled by big pharma, which china doesnt have as much cuz their healthcare is state-run. but wait, china still has drug problems, like synthetic stuff in rural areas. maybe their success is exaggerated propaganda?

also, historically, china had the opium wars trauma, so drugs are seen as a national humilation. that cultural memory makes their public support the crackdowns.

Conspiracy Theory:-

1:-CIA promoted drug trade to create a slush fund to operate as a country of its own. Hollywood made a movie on this too.

2:-US Govt, promoted drug trade to get rid of all the extra $$$$ they printed. After all the $$ escobar buried in land as he had no place to store them are not going to come calling for their dues.

Its a buffet, pick what you feel is the best answer.

mistiquefog

Because drug users and drug dealers got the death penalty.

OPKC2007

The war on drugs in the USA did "work", spectacularly. The results it's gotten were exactly what it was intended to achieve. It was never supposed to get people to stop using drugs recreationally.

Kymera_7

China was fully committed to eradicating illegal drug use.  The United States is not.

muffledvoice

China's war on drugs may have ended drug addiction in China, but did nothing to address the drug flow out of China.

Amazing-League-218

The penalties were much more severe and the courts didn't care how evidence was collected

Illustrious-Gas-9766

Because China was actually trying to solve the problem.

Deeze_Rmuh_Nudds

dodadoler

MartinByde

intellectualnerd85

Well, most people work a 60+ hr work week


Under extrodinary surveillance with very limited rights


Harsh penalties when caught in country


Exportation of drugs and ingredients is very profitable 

Ok-Butterscotch2321

Authoritarianism works efficiently, for better or worse. In this case the blanket uniform propaganda within the country with no dissent, unified front from legislation to judiciary to policing has been very effective in taking out any detected dealer. It comes with huge deficit in liberty, but things happen fast and uniform in authoritarian counties

ljosalfar1

Drug use has nothing to do with legality or punishment, it has everything to do with the mindset of the potential end users. 

Druggies will get drugs if they want them. Dealers will sell drugs if there is enough money to be made.

Society creates drug users, not legalities

They have no actual court system. Makes it easy to do what you want.

Sufficient-Object-89

sal696969

Because they don’t have civil rights like the USA has (or had). They can just kill you for a few grams or hash or send you to a death camp. They are a brutal dictatorship where a life is pretty much worth nothing. Also they have surveillance everywhere, so it’s also easy to find culprits.

El_Zapp

In general, government things “work” in China when they fail here because China has near total control of its people.

mishyfuckface

because in China, they don't have human rights

Icy_Huckleberry_8049

There's more respect for individual freedoms and choices here in the US, which makes it easier to unilaterally agree on the need to crack down on the supply chains but tougher to find consensus on how to deal with users, which makes it so how law enforcement deals with it at the individual level is both discretionary and makes the application of the law vary, state by state. 

China doesn't generally respect individual choice and related freedoms, accordingly, it's easy for them to convince the police and public of the 'rightness' of a one size fits all approach to dealing with users.

BrianScottGregory

Because people like Marsha Blackburn and her husband have a blackmarket

eeyorespiglet

What do you mean by "work"? What do you see that is different between these countries regarding drug use?

Fragrant-Kitchen-478

Because the USA refused to execute everyone caught with any amount of illegal drugs. That's why.

MichaelHammor

lol if you don't think people do drugs in china. there's a meth problem there and you can smoke weed, same as most places

dm_me-your-butthole

China doesn’t have a massive drug exporter next door

12bEngie

Every other country has enough self respect to not unleash their untrained, feral kids onto society and they know they don't just get a pass based on the color of their skin.

And, if you read the border reports, you will very easily notice that MOST of the drugs are on this side, which makes sense since the USA is the largest drug cartel in the world.

SnoopyisCute

You can’t believe any of the statistics coming from China on literally anything that they report. The Chinese Communist Party controls all data in an Orwellian manner.

Wespiratory

Reports highlight the increasing reliance of the United States on China for crucial pharmaceutical ingredients and technological components.

US-China Relations: Drug and Technology Dependency

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