YOUNG CHINESE HOOKED ON DRUGS

Draconian Measures Imposed To Stem Rising Tide Of Addicts

BEIJING - The heroin trail snakes up from China's borders, into its towns
and cities and through the veins of its addicts. But it stops at the
Beijing Police Compulsory Drug Detoxification Center.

Here, behind brick walls emblazoned with slogans like ''Love Life,'' the
state makes inmates in striped blue and white pajamas say no to drugs.

Two decades of economic reforms have given people money to buy drugs and
opened borders so that traffickers can reach them.

China's response to the problem is draconian. Traffickers are often
executed. Users are packed off to detoxification centers and labor camps,
67,000 of them in the first six months of this year, according to the
government-run Xinhua News Agency.

Police need not consult courts: A urine test positive for drugs and an
admission of drug use are enough to be sent away.

One 28-year-old inmate at the Beijing center, who came to the Chinese
capital on vacation, said she was out dancing when police tested her. The
test found traces of ecstasy. The woman says she took the drug in
Guangzhou, a southern city where she works for an air conditioning firm.

''I hadn't taken any in Beijing, but it still showed up,'' she said. ''They
said: `You have to go to rehabilitation.'''

Inmates who can afford it must pay - the equivalent of about $1,300 for
three months - more if they stay longer, said the camp's director, Lu
Qiulin. Most inmates used heroin. Less than 10 percent stay off drugs after
their release, Lu said.

On a tour last week, reporters were shown inmates marching in ranks and
playing basketball in a courtyard. In the past decade, the number of known
drug addicts has risen from 70,000 to 860,000 last year, the Ministry of
Public Security says. Specialists say the number of regular users probably
tops 4 million; most are under age 35.

''The big problem is among young people,'' said Pi Yijun, a drug specialist
at Shanghai's China University of Politics and Law. ''They have grown up
with a lifestyle their parents didn't have, and drugs are a temptation that
they want to experience,''

Young people in such prosperous coastal cities as Shanghai are behind a
steep rise in the use of factory-made drugs like ice, a powerful stimulant,
and ecstasy, which the Chinese call yaotouwan or ''head-shaking pills.''

Department-store worker Jia Jixiang smoked heroin for six years, spending
as much as $57 a day in a country where the average city worker earns $190
a month.

Jia lived with his parents, who turned him in. Police sent him to the
centre and after two months there, Jia says he's clean and determined to
stay that way.

"I have decided that I will no longer smoke, absolutely," he said. "I've
become a person again."