(or are they? have I been disinfo'd?)
I am of the opinion that the drug war is evil: cops and jails ruining someone's life because of a recreational activity. And the evidence shows it does more harm than good, not stuff I have to go over again.
But DPRK and China are harsh on drugs, not sure about Cuba.
What's up with that?
First counterargument that comes to my mind is a lot of capitalist countries are very harsh on drugs as well, like the very capitalist Singapore, so you couldn't draw a correlation. What other counterarguments should a comrade consider?
First, I'd consider the status quo in the US: the poorest are pushed out of society and daily degraded or assaulted by state forces, drug use is kept high by despair, and drug laws' primary purpose is to authorize a permanent domestic anti-insurgency campaign disguised as public safety
And second, I'd consider the historical context of each country. I think you'll find that AES countries' harsher drug laws virtually always form in response to real campaigns to weaponize drugs from western aggressors
We continuously create our drug problem and use it in a feedback loop of class violence, while they addressed what drug problems they had (inflicted on them) less violently and more effectively than we do and haven't made new ones by dehumanizing their population