Reports on Asian drug use tend to be confined to the Asian news sites such as the Malaysia Star, Rappler in PH, New Straits Times (MY and SG) etc – they are not the sort of thing those with a “Western” background and/or who does not take a closer interest in Asian news in general would immediately stumble across in comparison to somewhere like the Guardian, BBC News etc (your Google and other searches get tailored towards your geolocated IPs and/or what ethnicity these networks think you are, and they are smart enough to realise this isn’t merely related to buying the odd takeaway online).
Although real cannabis might be available in some Asian countries it isn’t so easy to get hold of in urban areas or city states like Singapore; so there was some interest in synthetic forms. There is also quite a large party/hedonistic scene in Southern China, the authorities to some extent turn a blind eye to it provided the kids still turn up for their jobs in the electronics factories on Monday. It was only because some of them weren’t (same as in Europe 20 years ago) the moral panics started.
The worst that happens to most of the NPS dealers (who are well educated, middle class and often fluent in European languages as much as Chinese) is that their factories are closed down, they are swiftly deported from whatever country they happen to be in (if its not CN) and their money is confiscated, they do not end up in gulags or get shot/hanged any more. Even in countries with death penalty they all get busted for literally miligrams below the “danger” amount so the charges are posession rather than supply. This has been going on for about 5 years now if not longer. The birth rate in many Asian countries (other than PH) is declining and thus the authorities simply cannot afford to be too harsh on their future generations.
