Wolfpaw
Banned
Compared to the West, drugs weren't all that widespread in China.
In big cities it was a problem, especially in coastal regions where smuggling was rampant. But a lot of the hype is due to the draconian measures resorted to by the Chinese to suppress it and the Europeans to maintain it.
Compared this to the West, where there was:
Mass morphine addiction among veterans after the American Civil War and Britain's various colonial wars; Paris was drunk on absinthe and wormwood; street urchins in St. Petersburg were hawking cocaine to the Ballet crowds and slummers; Orthdox Jews smuggled drugs in their peyots and beards; Victoria and Grant both guzzled cocaine-laced wine while Sigmund Freud regularly coked up and recommended it as a panacea, to say nothing of needle-noshing A. C. Doyle and his famous Detective.
In big cities it was a problem, especially in coastal regions where smuggling was rampant. But a lot of the hype is due to the draconian measures resorted to by the Chinese to suppress it and the Europeans to maintain it.
Compared this to the West, where there was:
Mass morphine addiction among veterans after the American Civil War and Britain's various colonial wars; Paris was drunk on absinthe and wormwood; street urchins in St. Petersburg were hawking cocaine to the Ballet crowds and slummers; Orthdox Jews smuggled drugs in their peyots and beards; Victoria and Grant both guzzled cocaine-laced wine while Sigmund Freud regularly coked up and recommended it as a panacea, to say nothing of needle-noshing A. C. Doyle and his famous Detective.