Cambodia vs China

WATCH the Vanguard documentary Forests of Ecstasy as well as these four supplementary clips.
WRITE a blog post in which you compare and contrast the situation in Cambodia today with that of China in the 19th century.

The drug epidemic that caused China to collapse has many similarities and slight differences from the Meth and Ecstasy problem that is occurring in Cambodia at this time. In Cambodia, people are illegally making the drug, ecstasy, to sell at a very high price in and out of Cambodia. Almost like China, where people were illegally importing and deporting opium from Britain to China. The difference from Cambodia’s ecstasy use and China’s opium use is that the officials in China also used opium, and they corrupted the government by actually supporting the drug use in China. Also, the ecstasy is being made in Cambodia itself, and doesn’t have to rely on a different country to send it to them. China had to trade silver for the opium with the British and that was what brought China down. Because of their reliance on Britain, the British were able to make an unfair treaty after the Opium Wars ended. The treaty was in Britain’s favor and China got torn apart by once known tribute states and countries. The people who are using ecstasy illegally in Cambodia don’t have to rely on other countries to send it to them because it is being made on their own turf. Since the safrole oil in the trees in the forest of Cambodia are used to make ecstasy, all of the ecstasy sites and camps are hidden in the forest itself. The people who are trying to stop the production of ecstasy are afraid of empty forest syndrome, which is the depletion of wildlife in the forest. The people of Cambodia are also worried about the habitat and trees that are being used to create the ecstasy, but China did not have any problem with the habitat being “underseige”. The people of Cambodia were worried about the forest being cut up that they went to the extent of taking more than one hundred chain saws from people who are potential tree cutters. Some people in Cambodia are trying to help the drug users by feeding them food and giving them shelter so they could try to stay off the drug. Another drug that has been circulating in Cambodia is meth. Meth is a very big problem in Cambodia because over 50% of the population are meth addicts. Just like ecstasy, meth was being made in Cambodia and sold to other countries for a large price. The reason so many people were taking drugs in Cambodia is from family, work, and pure pressure of their everyday lives. A lot of young people were fooled, just like in America, to take the drug to be “cool”. China’s people were first taking it because it was a painkiller, then they found out that it was highly addictive and soon, a large amount of the population were taking the drug. People in China may have taken it to take away their stress pains, but it’s for a fact that most young people in Cambodia took it because of pure pressure and stress. The Cambodian government is better compared to China in a sense because they are actually trying to stop the production and use of the drugs in Cambodia compared to China in the 1800s.