China Still Faces Tough Challenge in Fight Against Drugs

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, March 05, 2003

China Still Faces Tough Challenge in Fight Against Drugs

The steady growth of drug trafficking and use in the world continues to pose a tough challenge for China, a senior narcotics control official has said.

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The steady growth of drug trafficking and use in the world continues to pose a tough challenge for China, a senior narcotics control official has said.

Bai Jingfu, deputy director of the National Narcotics Control Commission (NNCC) and vice-minister of public security, said at the commission's plenum Tuesday that an effective crackdown must continue to prevent drug trafficking and sales from running rampant.

He said drug dealers in the notorious "Golden Triangle" of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand had intensified smuggling narcotics into China through northern Myanmar during recent years.

A major seizure of 6.38 tons of heroin in southwestern China's Yunnan Province last year came in through the neighboring "Golden Triangle", Bai said.

He said new trends of addicts taking the "ice" drug and the amphetamine ecstasy, known as the "head-shaking pill" in China, are emerging while easy narcotics-making chemicals continue to flow in through illegal channels.

The NNCC and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC) joined hands to so far stop 2,288 tons of these chemicals from being transported abroad.

Drug use, which was almost eradicated through draconian measures in the first decades following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, began spiraling again in the world'smost populous country from the mid-1980s.

The NNCC's latest statistics show that the number of registereddrug addicts in China reached one million by the end of 2002, an 11 percent rise year-on-year.

The statistics also reveal that heroin remains the principal narcotic for Chinese addicts, with 87.6 percent of them taking the"white killer", while more and more begin to try new drugs.

Bai said China would intensify its efforts in the anti-drug fight in 2003, including cutting off the roots of drug inflow fromYunnan and targeting places of entertainment where drug users and dealers gather, like dance and singing halls and night clubs.

He noted narcotics education needs to be strengthened in schools around the country while efforts to create "narcotics-free" communities should be deepened.

China will also further cooperate with the international community to deal with the drug problem, especially with neighboring countries, he added.

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