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That’s how you win a trade war. Start a drug war on the side of drugs.
History can affect the words of a language.
In Chinese, a substance is either 药 (Medicine) or 毒品 (Poisonous Products), there is not a term such as “drug” that can fit into both contexts by adding other descriptive words such as in the terms “Legal Drugs” and “Illegal Drugs”. A “drug store” if literally translated, would imply a place that sells illegal substances since “drug” is often translated to “Poisonous Products”. So a new Chinese immigrant would think someone is talking about illegal drugs if they hear the term “drug store” and not as in “Pharmacy”.
When Chinese People hear about legalization/decriminalization of drugs, in Chinese, that’d be: “美国合法化毒品” “The United States is Legalizing Poisonous Products”
So this is why legalizing weed will never happen in a country like China. Its literally referred to as a “Poison”.
Does this cause problems with abuse of medicine in China? Medicine usually is poison admitted in a small portion.
It would be
药物乱用药物滥用 (Misuse of Medicine), if its actually something a doctor prescribed, or over the counter. No one hearing this term would ever think of cocaine or anything like that. Unlike “drug abuse” which could imply illegal drugs.But it’d be 吸毒 (ingesting poison), if its like weed, cocaine, etc… You don’t even need the term “Misuse”, is already implied that is bad because its labeled as a poison
So overdose on medicine would be: 药物过量 (Medicine Overdose)
Overdose on cocaine would be: 毒品过量 (Poison Products Overdose)
People in China do know that Medicine can be poisonous, but its usually not labeled with the term “Poison”, since its only bad if its taken in large quantities, above what you are supposed to take.
This is really interesting! Are legal drugs like nicotine and alcohol categorised as poison, medicine, or something else?
The lack of a difference between the words drug/medicine seems to be more pronounced in US English, where it is common to say terms such as drugstore. In Commonwealth/UK English, the term chemist is more commonly used, and the terms drug/medicine usually have bad/good connotations. I think most would be alarmed if you said you went to the store to pick up some drugs!
Definitely more of an American thing with terms like “drug store”, but I think if the context is medicine or other non-prohibited stuff then “drugs” is pretty accepted, it just always comes with the joke that you’re nipping down to the chemist’s for some heroin.
According to Baidu’s “Wikipedia”, its stated nicotine as “无临床应用价值” (No Clinical Value)
In Baidu search engine (China’s most prominent search engine), I searched “尼古丁是毒品吗” (Is Nicotine a ‘Poison Product’?)
And the results seemed to all say: “尼古丁并非传统意义上的毒品” (Nicotine is not a Poison Product in the traditional sense of the definition)
Fun fact: Smoking is actually quite common in China. I’m speculating people just bored and have nothing to do, and since they can’t smoke weed like some western countries could, their “next best thing” is tobacco cigarettes.
Alcohol is just its own term: 酒精 (Alcohol)
I also searched “酒精是毒品吗” (Is alcohol a ‘Poison Product’?)
The results say:
“酒精不是毒品。 毒品是指鸦片、海洛因、甲基苯丙胺(冰毒)、吗啡、大麻…”
(Alcohol is not a Poison Product. Poison Product refers to Opium, [something], crystal??? (meth?), [something], weed…)
(too lazy to translate them all)
Coffee is just the transliteration of the English term “Coffee”: 咖啡; its just catorgorized as a drink.
You can go to Baidu.com and search the Chinese internet about stuff. It’s actually interesting to see another country’s perespective.
Never hear about china’s silver requirement though
What’s China’s silver requirement?
Europe didn’t have much in raw materials that China wanted and China wouldn’t trade for manufactured goods. So, most trade with China involved silver or gold. In an effort to address this trade imbalance, the British started shipping opium as a way to have another trade good for Chinese export.
Shipping opium is a light way to put it. The goal was to get the local populace addicted to Indian Opium and to receive payment in silver so that very silver could be used to buy tea.
The trade imbalance was driven by demand for tea and Britain was willing to have an entire population become addicted to feed that demand, essentially acting as a colonial drug dealer.
Unfortunately, people from colonial powers rarely learn or reflect on these aspects of their history (though I’m certain it is taught in China and India).
Seems fair to me, we get addicted to tea and they get addicted to opium?
(/s of course)
Polly, put the kettle on…
Unfortunately, people from colonial powers rarely learn or reflect on these aspects of their history
This is basic history education.
This documentary is part of larger series with both chinese and western historians, and goes into detail and background leading up to the opium wars https://youtu.be/26AjcWuYfUE
