I don't know too much about the East Asian countries other than culturally, they seem to be massively anti-drugs of any kind except tea & tobacco (with a minor exception for amphetamines because they help you work harder); every time I come across a discussion of drugs, especially psychedelics, in a Japanese or Chinese fiction or nonfiction work, I am struck by how ignorant the author obviously is and how they are peddling out of date War on Drugs & Reefer Madness hysteria.
In China, this might have something to do with the nationalist propaganda and heavy emphasis on the Opium Wars & foreign devils peddling evil foreign drugs and how the Community party Made China Great Again, but that wouldn't explain Japan or how the South Korean media goes into raptures when a Canadian is caught with 1 marijuana plant in his closet. The Chinese government also has an interesting conflict of interest: they don't necessarily want to invent or fund a better stimulant because that would compete with the source of something like 10% of all government revenue - the government tobacco monopoly.
they seem to be massively anti-drugs of any kind except tea & tobacco
Which is interesting as the Chinese traditional medicine heavily relies on hundreds of plant preparations, some with (claimed) nootropic properties.
Also, when drug use became socially acceptable in the West? 1960s, I guess, after Kerouac, Burroughs, etc?
So Scott Alexander's post at http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/01/2016-nootropics-survey-results/ shows that the most "effective" "nootropics" have still been the ones that have existed for a long time. What do these results really mean, though? Is it possible that people are just worse at noticing the subtler effects of the other drugs, or are just much worse at disciplining themselves enough to correctly use the racetams or noopept (as in, with choline)?
How much potential is there in innovation in nootropics? What is holding this innovation back, if anything? It feels like there hasn't been any real progress over the last 15 years (other than massively increased awareness), but could targeted drug discovery (along with people willing to be super-liberal with their experimentation) finally lead to some real breakthroughs?