This is borderline fake news headline. This is not about people casually using drugs, this is about how they treat drug traffickers. They consider traffickers opportunists who profit at the cost of the health of their citizens by not only infiltrating the nation but mocking the system by bringing in illegal substances under their nose.
They view them like we view cigarette companies, McDonalds corporate, greedy wallstreet brokers, behind-the-door deal makers, corrupt politicians, and petty low end operations executers like maybe the thug in Breaking Bad that does that enforcing for that White Supremacy group.
Or maybe how some people view Republican profiteers. They being easy on smugglers the same as some in the US trying to make gun regulations even less.
Remember that China also has the humiliation of the post-Opium War defeat in its cultural past.
This doesn't even get into the cultural aspect of why East Asian countries find casual drug use (ie: Not medicinal, medicinal is ok) extremely reprehensible. I am not saying you should agree with them or that I agree with them, I am merely trying to clarify the misconceptions this headline fails to address
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-pot-sales-20171114-story.html
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Japan-so-vehemently-anti-marijuana