Posted on 06/24/2011 10:15:52 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
North Korea’s Meth Export
An underground economy, border transients, poverty, and desperation fuel a drug scourge in the Chinese hinterlands.
Yanji is a desolate city 50 miles from the river border between China and North Korea. With its Stalinist architecture and tile-clad buildings, it could be Anywhere, China. But on closer inspection, cross-border influence is signaled by the Korean-language signs, Korean coffee shops, and Korean karaoke bars that are dotted around the city. It is a place that is home to refugees, smugglers, prostitutes, opportunists, and evangelical Christians in the market for lost souls.
Over the past decade and a half, methamphetamine—known colloquially as crystal meth or ice because of its flaky crystals—has flooded Yanji and the wider Jilin province, fueled by an underground economy, border transients, and the general poverty and desperation of the region.
Twenty years ago, Yanji had only 44 registered drug addicts. Last year, the city registered almost 2,100 drug addicts, according to a 2010 Brookings Institution report, with more than 90 percent of them addicted to meth or similar synthetic drugs. Local officials acknowledge that this is very likely a gross undercount and that the actual number may be five or six times higher. “Jilin Province is not only the most important transshipment point for drugs from North Korea into China, but has itself become one of the largest markets in China for amphetamine-type stimulants,” the Brookings report said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Don’t they just shoot drug dealers in China? Why don’t they just shoot Lil’ Kim?
I wonder if the drug legalization crowd will show up on this thread.
They shoot the ones who fail to pay tribute to the local commie police and officials.
They’re all busy with me over on the “Ann Coulter/Barney Frank and Ron Paul marijuana bill thread.”
LOL. Bless their hearts.
They’re still posting over there?
North Korea will go away when China decides they’ve had enough.
All by yourself? Wow.
Articles from Asia like this show how futile a war on the drugs themselves is.
Multiple first-hand sources have told me drugs are as easy to buy in China and Korea as they are here. Even with total government control, unlimited surveillance, mandatory jail time for even being high and death sentences for dealers.
It will never be stopped because one person with just a little bit of privacy can take a few dollars worth of household chemicals or plants and turn it into a product that people value several times more than gold.
The war should be on the reasons people abuse dangerous drugs in the first place. It is ALWAYS due to psychological trauma in someone’s life.
Even if all drugs were magically eradicated, those same sick people would abuse paint, solvents, shoe leather, etc. Solvent addicts destroy themselves far more than anyone abusing street drugs.
There are some who differentiate between marijuana and methamphetamine.
A government massively funding drug use in another nation where it was legal could destroy that nation without firing a shot, cool.
The major factor behind human ( child ) trafficking in Thailand is meth deranged families (yaba). It comes primarily from that other good friend of China - Burma.
Chia Pet is Tony Montana who knew LOL!
I disagree with that part of your comment.
Drugs are fun, it feels good, they are the "in thing" to do, everyone's doing it, so let's try. Problem is, some of the drugs have claws. Then once addiction sets in, it becomes a game of excuses.
Not saying that trauma hasn't figured into the mix, but for every one that blames a particular incident, there are 50 others that had the same thing happen and didn't turn into junkies.
It is simply time to get rid of the war on drugs.
The war on alcohol didn’t work, it only got a lot of people killed and put in prison. The same is happening in the war on drugs. If we end the war we will reduce our prison population by over 50%. Our cops will be able to do something worth while instead of looking for drugs in everybody’s house.
If it weren’t for the war on drugs how many no-knock warrants do you think there would be. How many S.W.A.T. teams do you think we would need.
Drugs are horrible and hard on society but the war on them is even worse.
I used to be for the war back when it first started. I used to think socialism was good too when I was a kid. I have grown up now and see I was bad wrong on both counts.
Legalize the stupid drugs and put a tax on them and get rid of the drug lords. At some point you just have to admit defeat!
NO Turkey does they execute people or they throw in prison hear of Midnight express
I think in Singapore they don’t mess around they cane you
Legalizing and taxing won’t necessarily work either. Look at the thriving business in untaxed cigarettes and they still run moonshine to this day.
Needle Park didn’t work out real well either so while I agree the WOD is not working, the simple solution of just legalizing and taxing, needs to be given a lot more thought than it has been given.
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