CHINA BURNS DRUGS, SENDS DEALERS TO THEIR DEATHS

BEIJING - China marked U.N. anti-drug day yesterday by executing
dealers, torching narcotics and publicly acknowledging the grim
inroads drugs are making among Chinese, particularly the young.

Those executed included three drug traffickers from Taiwan, a Hong
Kong resident, two Shanghai heroin dealers, four dealers in the
northern province of Shaanxi, three farmers in China's drug-afflicted
southwest, and four manufacturers of methamphetamine, the state-run
Xinhua News Agency said.

China also executed at least 38 drug traffickers last
week.

In its first policy paper on China's drug problems, the government
said yesterday that the number of registered drug addicts jumped from
148,000 in 1991 to 681,000 last year. Heroin was the drug of choice
for 71 percent of addicts, and 79 percent were under age 35, according
to the document issued by the State Council, China's Cabinet.

More recent figures have estimated the number of registered addicts at
800,000, and a senior U.S. drug-control official has quoted Chinese
estimates of 3 million to 12 million total drug users, out of China's
approximately 1.25 billion people.

After wiping out widespread opium addiction in the first years of
communist rule, the government was slow to react to a resurgence in
drug use after economic reforms in the 1980s. Only recently has the
government started public-awareness campaigns and appealed for
international cooperation.

Yesterday, authorities in the southern provinces of Fujian and
Guangdong burned 2 1/2 tons of seized drugs, Xinhua said.

State-run television broadcast a report about young disco-goers using
the drug Ecstasy, known in China as the "head-rocking pill." Stylishly
dressed women were shown shaking their heads violently to techno music.

China lies on a major transit route for the 110 tons of heroin
produced in neighboring Myanmar every year.

In related developments

Vietnam crackdown: A court yesterday convicted all 22 defendants in
Vietnam's biggest case of drug trafficking, sentencing half of them to
go before a firing squad.

The drug syndicate is thought to have smuggled 570 pounds of heroin
and 636 pounds of opium from neighboring Laos in 1992-99.

Afghanistan's offer: Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement promised
yesterday to stop poppy cultivation in the world's major
opium-producing country if the world helped it to revive its
war-shattered infrastructure.