Topic: 2024-Substance Abuse
Country: China
Delegate Name: Anderson Dadey
Topic B: Substance Abuse
China has had an interesting history with Substance abuse. The first major event that caused substance abuse to explode in China was the Opium war that was caused by China making Opium illegal due to a large amount of its population becoming addicted to it after its introduction by the British and other western powers in an attempt to increase demand for the substance within China. China eventually lost both Opium wars and the West successfully addicted the Chinese populus to Opium. However after decolonization China was considered a drug free country from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. Substance abuse became a problem in China during the late 1980’s and reached its peak during 2005 with over 1,000,000 registered drug abusers forcing the country to respond to these issues in many different ways. In recent years China has had a significant decline in substance abuse with an over 20% decrease in registered drug abusers from 2022 to 2023 with less than a tenth of a percent of China’s population registered as drug abusers.
China believes that the best way to combat the substance abuse crisis is to implement campaigns such as “Care for Drug Users” to reduce the demand for drugs and set up drug free rehabilitation services for people struggling with substance abuse. Not dehumanizing substance abusers and creating places where they can go to get help from the government to start rehabilitation. And an extremely effective way to prevent substance abuse is by cracking down on drug trafficking through increased border control and more substantial checks for all imports. China also wants for greater and more abundant treatments and preventative measures such as education of the risks of these substances and how some people are predisposed to being more susceptible to becoming addicted to heavy substances. China calls for the advance of research into treatments and even substitute substances that are less addictive in the eventual hope to wean people off these substances entirely. Finally China hopes that every nation can work together and share data that will hopefully cause an end to the substance abuse crisis.
Works Cited
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