• woelkchen@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    asked whether he would have to smoke cannabis if he studied in Germany

    Mindset of not living in a free country.

    • Brunacho
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      7 months ago

      or the mindset of living in a country that was induced into drug addiction by a “free” country before.

      • force@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I can’t seriously believe that Chinese people didn’t abuse psychoactive substances before they discovered the joy of British opium

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          British

          Also Imperial Britain was a monarchy, not a free country. Brunacho’s comment makes zero sense.

          • force@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            To be fair just before the time of the opium wars they were relatively far along in their process of converting to a democracy.

            • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              they were relatively far along in their process of converting to a democracy.

              A country with an unelected House of Lords is still not a free democracy.

              • FozzyOsbourne@lemm.ee
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                7 months ago

                The wackiest thing is that it’s often the Lords who have stopped the Commons enacting some really authoritarian stuff!

        • Meron35@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Chinese people enjoyed opium for centuries before the Opium wars. Opium was a legal and commonly traded item, and it was only since the 1790s that the imperial court started to worry about the effects of abuse.

          And even ~1000 years before then, Wu Shi San was a popular, but toxic psychoactive drug used by the elite in China.

          COPY - CES_WP136.pdf - https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/uploads/files/Working-Papers-Archives/CES_WP136.pdf

          Cold-Food Powder - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-Food_Powder

        • Brunacho
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          7 months ago

          they probably did, but there wasn’t an abuse epidemic before

  • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    SHANGHAI, April 15 (Reuters) - Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday reassured Chinese students in Shanghai that they did not have to smoke cannabis if they studied in Germany and that Germany had legalised cannabis hoping that consumption would go down.

    Scholz made the comments in response to a question from a student at Tongji University, who asked whether he would have to smoke cannabis if he studied in Germany, as the drug was not legal in China.

    Germany passed legislation to legalise cannabis in February, allowing individuals and associations to grow and possess limited quantities of cannabis.

    “We don’t want more people to consume cannabis, we want fewer people to consume cannabis, we want there to be more public education about it,” Scholz said.

    “The answer is very simple: you don’t have to smoke. But I do” Scholz said, before doing a fat bong rip, right there on the stage.

    The chancellor, who is on a visit to China and will meet leaders in Beijing on Tuesday, said Germany wanted to bring cannabis “out of the grey area, and people into the green area”.

    Some 4 million people consumed cannabis in Germany in 2022, according to health ministry data.

    I slightly edited it.