> "War on drugs”: It's a term that may elicit memories of the US government’s 20th-century campaign against the sale and use of illegal psychoactive substances
Every country in the western world and Asia set up a war on drugs too. Like most things it's not unique to America.
The whole banning drugs thing extended into plenty of different cultures. But became a much bigger issue after we developed our modern economic system which combined mass production with global distribution channels and provided a whole lot of people with disposable income to spend.
> Or opium, for which the British government went to war — twice — with China.
Opium wasn't really the reason they went to war, it was mostly just economic bullying by Britian's part which extended into a bunch of other reasons. It could easily have been over any product like tea (which is what Britian was exchanging the opium for).