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by closedloop129 1442 days ago
If the drugs are produced in China and thus are available there, why doesn't China (nor Mexico) have the same level of problems?

And the other way round: For sure, Opium was imported to England. Why didn't it become a problem?
5 comments
boomboomsubban 1442 days ago
>And the other way round: For sure, Opium was imported to England. Why didn't it become a problem?

Opium was produced around Calcutta(Kolkata). Shipping it to China was cheap, shipping it to the UK was expensive. Only the wealthy British could afford opium, and they used a ton of it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu...

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beebmam 1442 days ago
If you think opium wasn't a problem in England, you're delusional. A quick google search will prove you wrong: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Opium...

The drugs that China exports to the US aren't legal to be sold in China, but are legal (for them) to export to other countries.

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rnvannatta 1442 days ago
Well, in that historical case, the sale of Opium to China was a state sponsored project. Opium was only a minor problem in England, but it wasn't being smuggled into England by a quasi-hostile foreign country trying to re-balance its trade deficits.
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rsynnott 1442 days ago
The drug dealers were British subjects, in general. China didn't have an easy way to punish them (the actual merchants responsible generally wouldn't be entering China), but Britain absolutely did, so could enforce its own laws against opium (which were then fairly strict; it would've been a death penalty thing). Britain _did_ have an opium problem, incidentally, but the volumes imported were just much smaller.

Opium was produced in British India, not China, for the most part.

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bigcat12345678 1442 days ago
UK had a better government and more cohesive society, also much smaller.

10X the population, you'll see anything worked before becomes useless.

So one problem in UK is nusaise, in China would be catastrophe.

Just because Opium is not a problem in UK, doesn't mean that it would be a problem in China.

Also, liberal voting politics works in the West, could be a disaster in the majority of the world today outside of the West.

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