CHINA DRUG BUSTS, DETOX CAMP INMATES SOARED LAST YEAR

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's tough crackdown on illegal narcotics last year
netted the country's biggest-ever drug haul and landed record numbers of
addicts in detoxification camps, state media and medical therapists said on
Wednesday.

China prosecuted a record 106,000 drug-related crimes in the first 11
months of last year, up 29 percent from the 1996 period, the Guangming
Daily said.

Authorities arrested or detained 135,000 people for drug crimes during the
period, up 57.8 percent year-on-year, and smashed 2,000 drug rings, the
Legal Daily said.

Most cases involved heroin or opium, but the report also mentioned cannabis
and crystal methamphetamine, or "ice."

Of the total drug cases, 108 involved heroin of more than 22 pounds, the
Guangming Daily said.

Experts said the sharp rise in cases showed stricter law enforcement to
combat the return of a problem China's communist authorities had all but
wiped out in the 1950s.

"Although China's drug problem is increasingly serious, I think the
statistics reflect more China's efforts to eradicate it," said a researcher
who works with addicts in southwestern Yunnan province, the region in China
worst affected by drugs.

The number of people taken to China's 690 forced detoxification clinics and
to the 80 "detoxification-through-labor camps" also surged, the Legal Daily
said.

Heroin addicts were dragged to China's involuntary detoxification
institutions 180,000 times in the first 11 months, up 50,000 times from the
same period last year, the newspaper said.

"The scenario of a wife sending her husband, a father sending his son, to
public security departments and requesting forced detoxification occurs
often," Guangming said.

"Building a proportionate number of forced detoxification centers and
detoxification-through-labor camps as soon as possible is a basic policy
toward banning drug abuse," said a commentary in the People's Daily, the
Communist Party mouthpiece.

Medical workers told Reuters from Yunnan that many labor camps did not
stock drug substitutes used in easing the process of detoxification.

The brutality of forced detoxification, especially in the spartan labor
camps, often did more harm than good in the long term, one of the
therapists said.

"According to my understanding, forced detoxification is not an effective
measure," the researcher at the Yunnan Provincial Health & Anti-Epidemic
Center said. "You cannot just brutally force someone to kick the habit."

"Forcing addicts into a labor camp is not the best way to give people the
support and family warmth they need," she said.

Yunnan, in the southwestern corner of China, is the gateway for heroin
imports from the nearby Golden Triangle opium growing zone where Laos,
Thailand and Burma converge.

Customs officials in China, increasingly used as a transit route to Western
countries for illegal drugs, seized 812 lbs of illegal drugs in 1997, a
haul 30 percent bigger than the year before, state media said on Monday.

Authorities have pledged to crack down on drug smuggling, but the porous
border and mountainous terrain of southern China where the problem is most
rampant makes enforcement difficult.

Drug smugglers are frequently executed in China.

At the end of 1997, China had 77,000 beds in detoxification clinics for its
more than 530,000 registered addicts, the Legal Daily said. China had
148,000 registered addicts in 1991.

In 1997, authorities seized more than five tons of heroin and 350 tons of
synthetic drugs, the Guangming Daily said.

Drug use in China was almost eradicated under harsh communist crackdowns
but has surged in recent years as two decades of economic reform have
eroded social controls.

Copyright ) 1998 Nando.net
Copyright ) 1998 Reuters