[The People’s Republic of] China’s plan was a multistep one. First, they used ideology to teach the populace that drugs were a tool that put their nation on a backwards course and that drugs themselves were highly deadly. Then, they asked that people growing opium destroy their crops and replace them with helpful crops such as wheat.

They had revolutionary communists destroy smuggling and selling operations in China. Lastly, the addicted themselves were encouraged to admit their problems and to work in the new society. This approach could be considered a proto-12 Step approach, as the 12 Steps demand service to society.

The idea of executing drug dealers, which would inevitably catch drug users on the net, is not just inhumane and cruel; it is also ineffective. What helps stop drug addiction and sales is a multistep approach that we can synthesize: Acknowledge that some addicts can never achieve abstinence; acknowledge that medication-assisted treatment is one of the pathways to recovery, and acknowledge that we can do what the revolutionary Chinese did.

The Chinese path to freedom from addiction required Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought and a post revolutionary society to work, yet aspects of this approach can be used within the bourgeois state. We — addicts, loved ones of addicts, people of good faith, and revolutionary Marxists — should fight back against the Duterte-Trump strategy to murder people.