Illegal drug usage soars in North Korea: 30% nationwide

DailyNK ^ | 2016-12-06 | Kim Seong Hwan

[TigerLikesRooster]

The production and smuggling of Meth and heroin was (and probably is) the state-sanctioned enterprise to earn hard currency. All those involved are now going free-agent, making their own for sale. NK is a poor corrupt totalitarian country with large population of drug addicts.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[WayneS]

We should deliver them a couple of tons of heroin a month.

The Pyongyang Airlift

[pas]

I thought maybe they ran out of grass to feed the people with.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Can’t blame the peasants, they have nothing else to look forward too. Guess we should just nuke’em.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Opiate of the masses. Kim must approve.

[CIB-173RDABN]

state-sanctioned enterprise to earn hard currency

---

The only way they could have a drug problem is if it was state sanctioned. It makes you wonder how many of our politicians, judges and police have been bought with drug money.

[PGalt]

Make them legal. Tax them. Idiocy solved. Government grows.

[bert]

Is acetaminophen an illicit drug?

[TigerLikesRooster]

Make them legal.

It is in reality. Enforcement is negligible.

Tax them.

It is done in the form of bribe.

[Tax-chick]

Probably ... along with penicillin, Vitamin C, iodine ...

[bus man]

If I were imprisoned in that hellhole, I’d want to escape my misery through drug addiction too.

I just hope the South Koreans aren’t too idealistic, and/or too eager to reunify under any conditions. If and when reunification happens, it MUST be under the total control of the South. It cannot be a joining of equals, but rather the South taking over the North on its own terms. Anything less than that will lead to disaster.

[TigerLikesRooster]

The root of N. Korean drug problem is the collapse of medical services. Hospitals don’t have even most basic drug or medication for treatment. People first used heroin as all-purpose drug, a kind of powerful analgesic which can take care of symptoms, but not the real medical problem. Then Meth came along. From then on, people get them for recreational use, casually used like cigarettes and alcohol.

[TigerLikesRooster]

It should be declared as a protectorate(or territory) under S. Korean government with different currency and strict border control. Sudden assimilation would be disastrous for both North and S. Korean population.

[bus man]

It should be declared as a protectorate(or territory) under S. Korean government with different currency and strict border control. Sudden assimilation would be disastrous for both North and S. Korean population.

I totally agree with you. Given the pictures I've seen of the DMZ, they've got the "strict border control" part already down pat.

[stocksthatgoup]

Better than NK TV.

[TigerLikesRooster]

While high on dope, these folks are probably watching a S. Korean TV drama smuggled into their country. Their way of having a good time. A rather depressing snapshot of N. Korean society. Of course, they may not feel that it is depressing.

[JimRed]

Soma.

[NobleFree]

Ministry of People’s Security agents tasked with cracking down on drug dealers could themselves be bribed with drugs.

A totalitarian state can't suppress drug use, yet some fantasize that it can be done in the Land of the Free.

[AdmSmith]

They really have to produce more hard evidence, 30 % is extremely unlikely.

Compare with this

Some 32.4 million people - or 0.7 per cent of the world's adult population - are users of pharmaceutical opioids and opiates such as heroin and opium.

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2015/June/2015-world-drug-report-finds-drug-use-stable—access-to-drug-and-hiv-treatment-still-low.html

http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr2015/World_Drug_Report_2015.pdf