That's sort of a racist comment doncha think? We could compile a list of problem stuff that the US hoggs up, like gasoline. The white people are far more destructive to the environment than many other groups. It's far from a racial issue and characterizing it as such merely makes it more difficult to find a solution most of the time.
Your comment places the responsibility for the problem on the consumer side but where do you place responsibility for trade in illegal drugs?
The term "yellow peril" was recklessly chosen and might be pushing it a bit, but no, I don't believe my point qualifies as racist. Racism is abandoning facts in favor of purely raced-based judgments. The facts in this case are that folk medicines and food fads among Asian elites are threatening bears, rhinos and ocean ecology world wide. I'm just laying these problems on the correct doorstep. Polite silence about these problems won't help. Public awareness and global condemnation might.
Yes, the U.S. does use a lot of gasoline, but the Chinese are doing their best to catch up and are generating far more pollution per unit of output than the U.S. has produced in many decades.
Is it a racial issue? Depends on how thoroughly race can be separated from culture and ethnic pride. A well-educated Chinese women I know believes in her people's folk medicines despite having some medical training herself and a sister who is a doctor and assures her it's all bull crap. Beliefs that purport to represent the unique knowledge and wisdom of one's culture die hard. I have no problem disavowing my grandparents' belief that a fresh onion can suck the poison from a rattlesnake bite, or that water can be "witched" with a divining rod, but it's easier to dismiss folk wisdom from one's own culture when it's other members of that culture doing the dismissing. Asians need their own Mark Twain.
Where do I place responsibility for illegal drugs? Why, on Democrats, of course. Surely you don't think it's Republicans toking all that reefer, do you? They're drinking beer and Jack Daniels. Besides being illegal, they've read that weed lowers testosterone, and how you gonna be a Republican when you've got low T?
Well, now that I've set the grenade on the table and pulled the pin, I think I'll go do some yard work. When I get back I hope I don't find I've been banned, but I knew what I was doing when I followed this digression from fish ecology into the socio-political netherworld where so many threads seem to want to go.