The international press has been raising panic recently about a new "horror drug" known innocuously as "spice" that's reportedly enslaving the youth of Russia, where authorities claim that the "spice epidemic" has already claimed dozens of lives and hospitalized hundreds.
One of the most bizarre twists in the spice story, however, its main source: China, along with other countries across South East and Central Asia.
As a nation whose modern history is so finely intertwined with the "national humiliation" narrative precipitated by British drug-pushing and warmongering in the First Opium War (1839-42), the implication the China is now getting young Russians hooked on a dangerous, dementia-causing drug is as ironic as it is damning — even if, in China's case, it's product more of feeble law enforcement than deliberate state-led policy.
Spice is considered a "cannabis substitute" since it's comprised of chemical-coated herbs that mimic the effects of smoking marijuana. The proliferation of the new drug has therefore given ammo to advocates of the legalization of marijuana. They argue that spice has become popular simply because it's cheaper (USD 15 a bag) and more readily available that marijuana, despite being far more dangerous and addictive. If cannabis were available legally, they assert, the spice merchants would be put out of business.
About 550,000 Russians aged 18-35 died from drug abuse in the past five years. In Japan, with a population similar to Russia's, the death toll was only around 5,000.
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