Analysis by Hong Kong Federation of Youth Teams discovered that social media content material within the metropolis that includes medicine noticed over a threefold improve, from 927 in 2016 to three,114 by the top of final yr, first reported by RTHK News. The survey additionally takes intention at cannabidiol (CBD), as authorities think about a ban on the up-and-coming cannabinoid.
The examine, launched final week, additionally discovered a rise in video views in the identical interval for drug-related content material, from about 3.4 million to 7.6 million.
Moreover, researchers famous that social media customers posted a wide range of content material over the interval, together with fashionable memes, hashtags and non-fungible-tokens (NFTs) to advertise drug use. NFTs have grown in recognition through the years as a novel digital asset, typically taking the type of artwork, that may’t be copied.
“We discovered some NFT within the high-risk web sites,” stated Michael Leung, who works for the group’s youth crime prevention heart. Leung added that high-risk customers using memes, hashtags, cartoon characters and NFTs to advertise medicine “causes some customers to underestimate the dangers and severity of drug abuse drawback.”
The group additionally polled round 1,300 youthful adults, from November 2021 to July 2022, and located that 20% “underestimated the hurt of medicine.” Particularly, greater than one-fifth of respondents believed they have been capable of management “any cravings” for medicine. About 18% of interviewees additionally stated they felt taking medicine might relieve anxiousness.
The examine additionally discovered that greater than half of all drug-related posts originated on a platform, just like Reddit, referred to as LIHKG, adopted by Instagram and HKGolden on-line discussion board. Half of all content material logged by the examine reference hashish, whereas cocaine and methamphetamine have been featured in 11.6% and eight.4% of posts, respectively.
Leung attributed a few of the more moderen curiosity round medicine to the COVID-19 pandemic, as many residents have been confined to their houses and used social media extra typically since 2020.
CBD is among the many particular medicine seeing a rise in visitors over this time interval, too, with the variety of associated views rising from 5,707 in 2019 to 11,840 in 2020 and 43,980 in 2021. Bob Lee Siu-chui, a supervisor of the federation’s youth crime prevention heart, stated that CBD particularly has been marketed as a stress-relief and healthcare product “for enticement, decreasing the wariness amongst younger folks,” South China Morning Post reviews.
CBD is authorized in Hong Kong, as long as it doesn’t include THC.
“Some merchandise might include THC, an simply addictive substance that’s regulated by the Harmful Medicine Ordinance,” Lee stated. Lee additionally expressed concern that CBD might grow to be a gateway for younger folks to begin utilizing and promoting different medicine.
In flip, town’s regulation enforcement businesses are presently pushing to outlaw CBD throughout the yr, stressing the unlawful standing of hashish in an try to dissuade residents from making an attempt out the non-psychoactive cannabinoid.
“There’s a pattern in Hong Kong that some on-line customers talk about CBD,” Leung stated, including that “many individuals” have underestimated the dangers of CBD and the severity of damages hashish could cause.
A spokesperson informed South China Morning Put up that the federal government would search to ban CBD merchandise in early 2023.
“The federal government has taken a agency stance towards hashish and repeatedly said that the use, cultivation, manufacturing, trafficking…of hashish and managed hashish merchandise are unlawful and can stay so,” he stated. “We’ll proceed to coach the general public, particularly younger folks, to accurately perceive that hashish is a drug and it’s dangerous to well being.”
The 2016 Brookings Establishment report, “A Folks’s Struggle: China’s Battle to Include its Illicit Drug Drawback,” notes that China has confronted a rising drawback of illicit drug use. The quantity of registered drug addicts elevated yearly till publication for the reason that authorities’s first annual drug enforcement report in 1998. This drawback is arguably compounded by the truth that drug habit is taken into account a private failure and is extremely stigmatized, with drug habit not receiving a lot public sympathy or authorities funding within the nation.
“There are two essential methods for treating habit in China: (1) enrollment in obligatory cleansing facilities, and (2) sentencing to ‘training by labor’ camps,” the report reads.
The authors, San Diego State College sociology professor Sheldon X. Zhang and Rutgers College prison justice professor Ko-lin Chin, as a substitute really useful that China apply a public well being strategy to the remedy of addicts. Moreover, they suggest China promote evidence-based remedy applications, primarily based on scientific analysis; set up a dependable drug market forecast system, combining chemical composition evaluation, reviews and urine assessments of arrested drug offenders and group informants on illicit drug use traits; and improve the effectivity of its worldwide collaboration.
“Whereas not a silver bullet, maybe China … also needs to think about experimenting with a extra compassionate strategy oriented towards hurt discount,” the authors concluded.