WITH THE NEEDLE CAME AIDS

Consumption of narcotics was believed to have vanished-now addiction is
spreading fast

For a long time, the Chinese thought of drugs as merely a historical
issue-having to do with the Opium Wars against the British. Nowadays,
though, disco-goers are popping "head-shaker pills" (Ecstasy), young artists
and businesspeople are smoking marijuana, rock musicians and in some places
even students are shooting heroin. And entire shiploads of drugs from
neighboring countries are secretly making their way into China. "The
situation is serious," says Sun Dahong, top anti-drug warrior in the
province of Yunnan. "Opium production by our neighbors is skyrocketing, and
it is threatening us and damaging us."

Sun Dahong, director of the Drug Control Bureau in Yunnan, is fighting on
the front lines: this southwestern Chinese province borders on the Golden
Triangle of Burma, Laos, and Vietnam, and it is the main entryway for opium
and heroin coming into China. Sun's investigators have more than 4000km of
border to watch over. Yunnan is home to more than a dozen minority
populations with relatives in the neighboring countries. Five tons of drugs
were seized in the province in 1998, almost a third more heroin than in the
preceding year and a fifth more opium. It is estimated that 100 tons of
heroin and 2000 tons of opium are produced each year in the Golden
Triangle-and the chemicals needed for drug processing are coming
increasingly from China.

Since Beijing has awakened from years of drowsiness and declared war on
drugs, the smugglers have begun to arm themselves ever more heavily.
"They've got hand grenades, pistols, and other weapons", says Sun.
"Organized crime is becoming a more and more difficult problem." And because
smugglers with more than 50 grams of heroin face the death penalty anyway,
most carry the drug by the sackload, in order to feel the ever-growing
market in China. The Asian economic crisis has spared China, and precisely
that fact is now making life harder for drug investigators. "Because our
currency is stable, the drug bosses are bringing far more drugs to us than
to Southeast Asia," says Sun.

There were 540,000 registered addicts in 1997; in reality there could be
several times as many. With the needle came AIDS: according to the
government, two-thirds of all HIV-infected people had become infected by
injecting drugs (today their number is estimated at 400,000). The motives
of the addicts are familiar: values and a sense of purpose are missing in
modern life, and many have lost their way within society, as well as losing
their jobs.

A specifically Chinese problem contributed to the rapid spread of drugs:
"Precisely because drugs were largely non-existent in China, we had
completely lost our sense of the danger they present," explains Dong Sheng
from the Drug Control Bureau. The government has learned its lesson. It is
now taking measures not only towards police interdiction, but in prevention
and education. These efforts include presentations and new schoolbooks as
well as the campaign to "Say Yes To Life and No To Drugs". In the city of
Tuiyan, 10,000 youths were rounded up in order to take a solemn oath against
drugs. Every drug addict caught by the police must enter forced treatment
in one of the 700 centers that have sprung up so far-and a return to drug
use lands addicts in a labor camp.

The government proudly quotes words of praise from the United Nations for
its war against drugs. But the danger continues to grow. "We are lacking
in money and in training for our officers," says Sun Dahong. The quality of
treatment is also the subject of debate. There are model centers like the
one in Kunming (see accompanying report), and there are horror stories like
those from the island of Hainan. "I had to pay the guards in order to see
my girlfriend," reports a businessman from Sichuan. "The clinic was a
farce, all about making money. My girlfriend was in horrible shape, nobody
paid her any attention. Her roommate, they simply allowed to die. I
managed to get her out of there, with plenty of bribe money."