I get what the Zion Don's trying to say, but it's still fucking
wrong on so many levels. Countries like Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines (at least when Duterte was in power), among other East/Southeast Asian nations
do prosecute drug usage and often end up issuing the death penalty to drug dealers; this is
demonstrably true. What he's overlooking is how the drug trade still permeates every layer of society within those countries. Even if the death penalty is used as an admittedly effective deterrent, the problem still doesn't go away! Starvation wages from legal lines of work often push the underclasses into the black market for more lucrative employment options, even if those opportunities with the black market carry the death penalty. Let's not forget that sex tourism often intersects
heavily with seedy dealers looking to use foreigners to act as unsuspecting mules.
More to the point: the poorer (or unequal) the country, the worse the drug problem is. As an example, China is where most of the world's fentanyl comes from, despite the CPC having draconian punishments for users and dealers alike. What's often lost upon people discussing APAC (or China more specifically) is that
openly selling is commonplace in poorer provinces of the mainland (i.e. Guangxi, Guizhou, etc), where poverty
and corruption are equally high. Does the death penalty stop the average Han Chinese person from buying, let alone dealing? Sure, let's say that it does. Does it stop the disenfranchised peasant who was forcibly evicted from his home to make room for more ghost cities? Probably not.
