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Notes -
I'm glad someone else has looked into the Maoist answer to the drug problem. The problem in America at this point is not only do we believe in Democracy, but the Democratic voters paralyze and any decision-making process allowing us to actually begin to answer the problem. Only the wokest policies are able to pass as we blindly virtue-signal the country to oblivion.
The drug problem will not be delt with until we close our southern border -Trump was right, deploy the army, shoot at any illegal trying to enter the country. This won't work as I'm sure firing into Mexico would cause some international treaties to be broken, but the paralysis at every level in US Cities is becoming untenable.
I'd argue US drug policy is not "woke" at all - in fact, this is one of the rarest case where I'd like it to be closer to what the wokes think. I mean, we still have marijuana as Schedule I federally. There's no substantial distinction between highly addictive and non-addictive drugs. The whole policy is a mishmash of nonsensical historical baggage and moral panic. And the population is largely OK with it because they don't care - they aren't drug users (unless they're ill and need strong painkillers, in which case sucks to be you) and drug users look ugly, so just put the boot on their faces and be done with it.
As for the idea that totalitarianism can stop drugs - I'd propose you a question - did USSR have drug addicts? If you research this question, you may find that your faith in the effectiveness of totalitarian regimes in suppressing problems like drug abuse would be substantially eroded.
I was looking more at how the Mao ended the Opium crisis than I was looking at USSR's drug issues and responses. Russia's bureaucrats have always been notoriously corrupt which might have prevented them from effectively fighting drug addiction, but China's ability to turn around drug crime through reeducation and violently eliminating any drug dealer regardless of status were incredibly effective of ending the opium crisis.
All totalitarian bureaucrats are notoriously corrupt. At least ones that are members of any sufficiently large state. It's impossible to find enough fanatics, and the temptation of unchecked power is just too great.
The Economist slightly disagrees: https://www.economist.com/china/2019/03/21/chinas-strong-arm-approach-to-drug-addiction-does-not-work
It may be that as many other "incredible effective" totalitarian policies, they are only reported as effective because it was reported so. I am admittedly no expert at all on China drug policies, but if you need to put 320K people per year into camps, I don't think you have solved the problem in an "incredible effective" manner. Same if you need to execute thousands of people per year - I mean surely the CCP sees zero problem with that, but in my opinion, if you still have thousands to execute every year, declaring the problem "ended" is a bit premature.
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