On a societal level, China has basically zero tolerance for traditional drugs. Because of a lot of misleading—but extremely effective—propaganda, getting associated with drugs pretty much means social death.
Whether it’s cannabis, opioids, stimulants, or psychedelics—most people genuinely believe they’re all the same: use it once and you’re hooked forever. To them, shooting heroin and smoking weed are basically no different.
On top of that, if a drug user gets caught in China, by the third time they’re sent to a compulsory rehab center for two years.
China also has the densest street camera surveillance in the world, plus extremely strict monitoring of online money transfers. So dealing drugs in China is basically like standing on a ticking time bomb.
But here’s the weird part: if a compound isn’t listed in the official “controlled narcotics and psychotropic substances” catalog, you can be bold enough to have your runners meet buyers openly—because there’s literally no punishment. For example, a few years ago in China, selling 10 kg of O-PCE was legally no different from selling 10 kg of flour, as long as it was cash.
When you put all of this together, it leads to something strange: Chinese drug users tend to care first about whether a substance can pass a standard urine test—and only after that do they worry about side effects.
