The Truth about Gambling and Drug Use in China

April 21, 2011


Paul Johnson wrote an opinionated essay of China’s Secret Sickness: Is History repeating itself? in The Jewish World Review.

Johnson wrote, “China has secret weaknesses. Its most serious: gambling and drug addiction. China’s new prosperity is already producing a rapid expansion of the country’s international gambling class, not to mention an appreciable increase in the number of drug addicts.”

What Johnson says of China isn’t a secret.

In fact, North America is by far the king of global gambling and drug use — something Johnson doesn’t mention.

From Illegal Drug Trade in the People’s Republic of China, we learn “there are over 900,000 registered drug addicts in China, but the Government recognizes that the actual number of users is far higher. Some unofficial estimates range as high as 12 million.”

When we compare China’s figures with the US, we discover that “an estimated 12.8 million Americans, about 6 percent of the household population aged twelve and older, use illegal drugs on a current basis (within the past thirty days).…” Source: NCJRS.gov

 

If these numbers are correct, China and the US have about the same number of illegal drug users.  However, China has five times the people, which mean 6% of Americans are addicted to drugs while less than one percent of Chinese are.

How about Johnson’s claim that the Chinese have a secret sickness for gambling? The answer may be found at Global Economics of Gambling (GEG).

From GEG, I learned that in 2006, revenues from gambling in America were 94.9 billion dollars while they were only 5.1 billion in China.

I have a question for Paul Johnson, “Why are you focusing on China when North America has more of a problem with gambling and drug use than China has?”

Discover Macao – Organized Crime in China or Not

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

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1 Comment | America, capitalism, China, crime | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Why China is Studying Singapore – Part 1/3

February 6, 2010

I have a friend who often says America has the best political system in the world and no other country compares. Then he turns around and criticizes the government when a Democrat is in office.

Let’s look at a few facts. America may be the richest nation on the earth with the most powerful and expensive military, but it is also a deeply debt ridden country with the largest prison population on the planet. Beyond that, there are almost a million street-gang members in our cities. Killings are so numerous that our national media doesn’t report them all. I’ve read that students physically assault an average of five-thousand public school teachers in their classrooms every year. If you want to learn more, read this example or visit Crazy Normal.

And let’s not talk about the drug problems in the US. What is freedom? What happens when we allow so much freedom, that many can’t enjoy it in safety?

Are these reasons enough to explain why China is studying Singapore instead of the United States economic system? When Deng Xiaoping opened China to a market economy, he wasn’t thinking about the United States. I will go into more detail in the next posts for this series.

Go to Part 2 of Why China is Studying Singapore

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | American culture, China, economy, politics, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse