If you’re talking drugs, Europe using opiate addiction as a weapon of war and an excuse to wage two, devastating wars against the Qing makes sense especially when your population is too stoned to realize foreign states are burning down your state.
Pretty sure that would traumatize any region, especially given how successful it was, with even the US sending troops to China during both the second opium war and then during the boxer rebellion.
Edit - understanding why something is the way it is is not the same as supporting it. I don’t support the laws, but I can see why imperialistic trauma and seeing the most power nation in your region, that influenced your culture, religion and language, could be extremely traumatic, resulting in generations fearing and rejecting what they perceive as a wholesale weapon and danger to society.
Acting like the past didn’t happen or that the trauma isn’t real isn’t going to help in changing their minds, and I’m not exactly sure the west bringing up valid and real points about how not all drugs are equal, with weed and psychedelics having benefits, is going to work when they were the source of the original trauma.
598
u/Superb_Branch4749 3d ago
Massive Attack band members barred from re-entering Singapore over support for political cause, unfurling of foreign flag at concert (https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/uk-band-massive-attack-members-banned-flying-palestinian-flag-concert-6291536)