Six Nations, One Crisis: Drug Addiction and the Fentanyl Trade in the USA, China, Russia, Japan, India and France

Drug addiction looks completely different depending on where you stand. In the United States it means fentanyl-laced pills and a decades-long opioid emergency. In China it means a state that has all but eliminated the heroin epidemics of the 1990s through mass surveillance and harsh enforcement, while its chemical industry quietly supplies the raw materials for other countries’ crises. 

In Russia it means an aging population of injecting heroin users cut off from harm-reduction support. In Japan it means one of the lowest drug-use rates on earth, offset by a stubborn methamphetamine subculture. In India it means a mostly licit-drug and cannabis problem layered on top of a fast-growing synthetic and injecting-drug crisis in the northern states. In France it means a booming, blue-collar cocaine market alongside Western Europe’s most entrenched cannabis use.

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