Payback for the Opium Wars.
thatd be if it was the british getting opium surely?
https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dwe/82011.htm
It was more than the British. The Americans were quite involved too.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/american-old-money-opium-trade-fortunes/
Not really… the US did this to itself.
no let me blame the CCCP for my horrific lifelong injuries it’s more fun that way.
Nah, the ‘evil Orientals’ aren’t intentionally flooding the US with opioids like perfidious Albion did to China during both Opium Wars, there is just have a lot of manufacturing there, including production of opioids like fentanyl and its analogues for legitimate medical purposes, which is easy(or at least possible) for criminals(that exist in any country) to divert/steal some of that supply to sell to the other criminals that distribute it to the US market.
This happens anywhere dual use medical drugs/drugs of abuse are made, e.g. in the UK almost all of the ketamine and street benzos come from India, but that doesn’t mean Modhi is doing it purposely as revenge for the Raj.
For it to be equivalent to the Opium Wars the PRC would need to park warships off the coast of the US and force the government to legalise opioids then have their manufacturers sell directly to dealers and users there.
If you want to blame anyone blame cartels who found fentanyl more profitable and easier to smuggle than the black tar heroin previously grown and produced in South America, or the actual source of the problem and the reason cartels exist and are as powerful as they are: the US’s atrocious drug war policies and the politicians that wrote and voted for them.
My quip was tongue-in-cheek, however, you’re not wrong here.
As John Ehrlichman, a top Nixon aide, revealed in a 1994 interview that was published in 2016, the war on drugs itself was designed to target Black people and “hippies”:
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. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Their plan set the country on the misguided, punitive, and counterproductive path it pursues today, as administrations since have carried it forward. Incarceration rates skyrocketed during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, surging from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997, and Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump made their own damaging contributions to escalating the drug war.
https://www.vera.org/news/fifty-years-ago-today-president-nixon-declared-the-war-on-drugs
If you want to know more about the above poster’s comment read:
https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/901/The-School-of-the-AmericasMilitary-Training-and
On Orientalism, of course there’s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)
Fair enough, you should make that clear in future, as I see plenty of people on reddit and elsewhere claim the the current fentanyl driven opioid addiction and overdose crises are caused by direct intervention of the PRC as revenge for the century of humiliation etc, often with racist overtones
That’s very fair!!
Because hurting more people who have nothing to do with the politics of it is justifiable at all…
Direct inheritors within a historically patrilineal society = nothing to do with. Where is this fictional universe where generational wealth doesn’t exist?
They still had nothing to do with it. Benefiting in a vague way generations later doesn’t make anyone capable of traveling back in time.
If you are gratified by turning people into addicts then you’re a cruel asshole.
In no way supporting America/Britain or Chinas actions.
But the connection between wealth and opportunity 200 years ago to today is not as vague as you’ve made it out to me. There’s a reason that the groups that hold advantage over others have remained the same for the past several centuries (European colonialism, chattel slavery, race science etc).
So what? Can the Chinese workers murder the political and business leaders because Mao murdered millions decades ago and they benefit from it today? Do the sins of the parents pass through their entire bloodline and forever? Turning people, who didn’t have anything to do with the opium wars, into addicts over some centuries old desire for vengeance is just cruelty. You also aren’t just affecting people who had a small numbers of their ancestors involved but people who never had any ancestors involved who live in America, people from all over the world. Just target white people, too? So it’s now a racially targetted form of violence, too?
Can Japan and Korea murder Chinese people because of the wars of the past? Can the Chinese kill Japanese for the atrocities of WW2? Should the distinct non-Han Chinese ethnic groups seek vengeance on the Han Chinese for their historic acts of genocidal superiority, violence, forced relocation and theft that they prosper from today? There is reasons Han Chinese hold advantage over others and have remained the same for Millenia, afterall.
Not advocating for the perpetuation of racial violence, even though it is where Western Europe and its settler nations have derived the lion’s share their disproportionate wealth. Simply pointing out that those advantages have passed down from generation to generation via traditionally patrilineal modes of inheritance. Failing to acknowledge that would be an ignorant reflection on history.
You’re just using it as an excuse to be cruel to people who never hurt you because you hate them. Making addicts out of powerless Americans because the British rulers 150 years ago did something similar is nothing but cruelty and vengeance.
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At its peak a few years ago in the US, about 1.2% of the population was opiate dependent. In 1949 in China, 4.4% of the population was opiate dependent. Pretty stark that the rate per capita was almost quadruple. Of course, the potency of what people in China in 1949 were using was significantly lower on average.
Wait I thought drugs are illegal? How come there are still opioid addicts?
If only the war on drugs included insurance companies.
Can opium really be considered an opi-oid when it’s the OG?
opioids include artificial and natural opiates, so yeah
The US flag always looks like it’s for clowns when put against other flags. Americans prob don’t see it because they’re used to it, but it’s got all the hallmarks. Uncle Sam always looked like a Ronald McDonald for kids of drafting age and up.
Meanwhile, China should go back to the Qing flags; dope af—no pun intended. The new one with the sun up the top left is alright, but very boring.
I dunno who these guys on the bottom-left are. Placeholder graphic?
May I present the flag of the British Indian Ocean Territory
Looks like something out of an 8 bit video game and not on a good way.
I mean… Yeah?
This is just a difference in appreciation for cultural styles, not a particularly cutting observation. The US has used the stars & bars bunting for circus performances and celebrations for literal centuries. The uncle sam stiltwalker is a deeply iconic image in american culture for a very good reason, after all.
Yeah we’re loud, obnoxious, and showy with a strong tradition of carny bullshit in every aspect of our culture. Motherfucker we brought carny bullshit into religion then exported it back to the carnival. You’re in the deep south and see a big tent filled with people, dangerous animals, and a man shouting that could be a circus or it could be a pentecostal religious service. Or fuck maybe its a doctor doing a medical show, idk those could easily be happening again.
Is the opioid epidemic crisis in America still bad?
Looks not great. Assume that Narcan has been pulling these numbers down a bit so probably need a different data set.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_drug_overdose_death_rates_and_totals_over_time
Oof & June 2025:
New Report: U.S. drug overdose deaths rise again after hopeful decline
Good thing no more Narcan! Thanks RFK.
That’s “just” there death rate, the addiction problem to (semi-)legal opioids is probably alleviated only by falling median purchasing power & loss is health insurance/healthcare accessibility.
While this certainly is not the intent of China’s current leadership (at least not in whole), make no mistake. China is VERY aware of their “Century of Humiliation” as they call it and are dead set on regaining their place as the overwhelming master of the global economy like they were for thousands of years. At least, Xi Jinping himself is set on this goal and doing his best to make the rest of the nation follow suit. Again, don’t get me wrong, America’s shitty decisions are the cause of their own opioid crisis, I’m just pointing out that Xi has probably privately laughed at the irony at least once or twice
