Edit: Thank you all for the answers!
I've been reading Mao since coming here and I saw this talking about gaming.
" Gaming. Where the peasant association is powerful, mahjong, dominoes and card games are completely banned.
The peasant association in the 14th District of Hsianghsiang burned two basketfuls of mahjong sets.
If you go to the countryside, you will find none of these games played; anyone who violates the ban is promptly and strictly punished. "
I guess my question is why would gaming be banned? I figured there is some cultural context that I'm missing because I would think especially during this time period it would be a way to bring people together during downtime.
(It should be noted that gambling was its own category)
Thank you for your time!
Speculation: Gaming was probably a pastime inside opium dens. So while leaving it alone might sound fine if you're banning gambling separately, it's not fine if it enables hidden opium dens, you can ban the gaming and kill the hotspots for potential opium hangouts.
If I wanted to reduce the number of pubs in the UK I would ban pool, darts, snooker and traditional pub games, maybe even the playing of music by businesses/organisations. The target would be the premises and activities that surround the consumption of alcohol. Well that applies for a drugs epidemic like opium too right?
Banning all non-industrial uses of brass would take care of every pub immediately.
Rofl they'd just switch to something less self-cleaning and gross. Hopefully this illustrates my point though, if you have a normalised culture surrounding a drug then part of taking that drug down means you have to target all the things that enable the spaces where that drug is used. If the drug is used recreationally then organised recreational activity is the thing you end up having to target. Banning the drug isn't enough and killing dealers isn't enough so targeting the material conditions that create environments where the drug is disseminated is where you escalate your prohibition to.
In the early 1900s 26% of all adult males were addicted to Opium, comparing this to trying to prohibit alcohol is quite apt in the sheer scale of normalisation.