Methamphetamine

‘Breaking Bad’ In China: How Meth Is Spreading Across Rural Heartland

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H/t reader M.G.:

Looks like a for profit health care system and abandonment of the elderly isn’t the only western vice imported by China……..Now, Meth rears its ugly head.

Pity China can only adopt our worse western habits…..

CHINA-METH

– ‘Breaking Bad’ in China: how meth is spreading across rural heartland (The Christian Science Monitor, May 3, 2015):

CHANGSHA, CHINA — Ah Chao first came across drugs as a teenager, when his cousin asked him to hold his tourniquet while he shot up heroin.

Now a stocky 32-year-old in jeans and a black nylon jacket, Ah Chao (not his real name) recalls between slurps from a bowl of noodles how frightened he was.

“Heroin did not appeal to me at all,” he says. But the experience did not put him off other drugs.

Read more‘Breaking Bad’ In China: How Meth Is Spreading Across Rural Heartland

North Korea’s ‘Drug Epidemic’: ‘At Least 40-50% Are Seriously Addicted To Methamphetamine’

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– BreaKim Bad: 40-50% Of North Koreans Seriously Addicted To Meth (ZeroHedge, Aug 25, 2013):

Perhaps in an effort to numb themselves of the daily grind of a delusional dictator amid widespread starvation, North Koreans have turned en masse to the ‘bingdu’ or ice. As the WSJ notes, a study in the Spring of 2013 found that “Almost every adult in that area (of North Korea) has experienced using ice and not just once,” and the author noted that “at least 40% to 50% are seriously addicted to the drug.” Unsurprisingly for the closed nation, there is no official data, but as poppy fields disappeared in the nation, meth dealers were quick to step in and ‘Heisenberg’ the people’s needs. Now “doing ice is a social thing; it is a lot of fun,” as the ‘epidemic’ has spread from mid-ranking officials and police officers in 2004-2008 to the general population of students and youth now.

Via WSJ,

North Korea is experiencing a “drug epidemic,” according to a study published in the Spring 2013 edition of the journal North Korea Review.

“A New Face of North Korean Drug Use: Upsurge in Methamphetamine Abuse Across the Northern Areas of North Korea” explains how during the past several years meth production has gone from government-owned factories to privately run underground laboratories and “home kitchens.”

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Throughout the 1990s and into the next decade, opium was the narcotic of choice for both the cash-strapped Kim Jong Il regime and the populace. But by the mid 2000s, the poppy fields began to disappear and meth became pervasive.

Read moreNorth Korea’s ‘Drug Epidemic’: ‘At Least 40-50% Are Seriously Addicted To Methamphetamine’