For abusers, there is a mandatory rehab center. For dealers, there is a swift
trial and execution. The past won't be repeated, officials vow. In a war on
drugs, China cracks down on users and dealers

By Jennifer Lin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

BEIJING Zhou couldn't get her husband to beat his drug habit. So she
joined him.

``I got tired of quarreling,'' said Zhou, 30. She and her husband, Gao, would
smoke a gram of heroin each from a creased foil packet, sucking in swirls of
smoke through a straw until they fell into a stupor. It cost them the
equivalent of $50 a day a huge sum for ordinary Chinese.

``I almost couldn't work,'' said Gao, who with his wife owned a restaurant
near the Fragrant Hills park in the Chinese capital. ``I always wanted to
sleep. I slept over 10 hours a day.''

Now Zhou and Gao sat side by side on a sofa, wearing matching blueandwhite
striped pajamas and black slippers. Her ponytail was a little cockeyed and
the part in her hair was crooked. His eyes were glassy.

They are patients at a drug rehabilitation center on the outskirts of
Beijing, forced into a threemonth program after their arrest in March.
Yesterday, the Beijing Public Security Bureau introduced them to a handful of
foreign reporters.

Out of hand

With uncharacteristic candor, China is owning up to the fact that its drug
problem is getting out of hand.

The unusual rehab center tour for journalists was held to publicize a
sixmonth campaign that China launched on April 1, calling it a ``people's
war'' against drugs.

It's ``Just Say No'' with a bite: In addition to talking frankly about the
dangers of drugs, police are cracking down on both suppliers and users. For
dealers, public executions after swift trials are common.

As the Yangcheng Evening News put it the other day: ``Drugs are like mice
running across the street, with everyone yelling `Kill!' ''

China likes to boast that it took the Communists only three years to wipe out
opium abuse after coming to power in 1949 and that for three decades, the
country was ``drug free.'' But drugs have been creeping back into style as
Chinese citizens increasingly have the money and means to dabble in them.

At one time, the problem was concentrated along China's southern border with
the ``Golden Triangle'' of Burma, Thailand and Laos. But today, everything
from hashish to synthetic drugs like ``ice'' and Ecstasy can be bought in big
cities.

Setting up labs

Drugs are flowing across China's vast border from suppliers in central and
southeast Asia. Crime syndicates from Hong Kong and Taiwan, meanwhile, are
setting up labs inside China. China already is the numberone producer of ice
better known in the States as ``crystal meth'' a cheap, addictive and
smokable form of methamphetamine.

China has 520,000 addicts who are registered with medical institutions.
Authorities privately estimate that the actual number of drug abusers could
be closer to 12 million of China's 1.2 billion people.

Although that is not a startling percentage by Western standards, the rate at
which the drug problem is growing has become a grave concern.

``Our government has realized that the drug issue is not only a problem that
influences the order of society, but also a big political issue that is
connected with social stability, national security and the rise of our
country,'' said Ruan Zengyi, deputy director of the Public Security Bureau.

Ruan said drug abuse is leading to an increase in major crimes. Last year,
drug addicts were involved in 13 percent of the murders, thefts and serious
crimes in Beijing.

On Tuesday, police cracked a ring of 33 thieves, including 23 addicts. In a
major robbery last year, a band of five drug dealers stole almost $100,000
worth of jewelry from a store in western Beijing.

In all, police say dealers are involved in 20 percent of the city's
gunrelated crimes. ``This very much jeopardizes the social order,'' Ruan
said.

The specter of a rising drug problem haunts people who are old enough to
remember the days when addicts languished in opium dens. Before 1949, one out
of every 20 Chinese used opium.

In an editorial two weeks ago, the staterun China Daily said: ``The Chinese
people, once victimized and humiliated by opium forced upon them by Western
imperialists in the last century, refuse to suffer from narcotics again.''

Gao, the recovering addict, knew the lessons of the Opium War, which China
fought more than 150 years ago to stop British drug trafficking. But
temptation got the better of him.

``I never expected it to be so strong,'' Gao said of heroin's embrace.

Gao doesn't know how the police found out about his drug use. But after his
arrest this year, he was ordered to the Beijing Public Security Bureau's
Compulsory Rehabilitation Center.

He didn't pay a fine or face prison, just three months in mandatory rehab.
Another patient reporters met on yesterday's tour, a 38yearold businessman
named Liu, was turned over to police by his wife. She had given up on him: He
was using a gram or two of heroin a day, and in two years he had run through
about $40,000 of their money.

The rehab center, about 25 miles from Beijing, is the only mandatory drug
facility for the city; four hospitals have voluntary programs for drug
addicts.

Spartan and bland, the center feels more like a house of detention than a
clinic. The brick wall enclosing the exercise yard is topped by barbed wire.
Guards in green uniforms pace back and forth.

Patients bunk eight to a room. The wards shown to reporters were spotlessly
clean, with bedsheets tucked in tightly and slippers lined up under each cot.

Opened in 1995, the facility is treating 132 addicts, including 23 women.
Nearly 40 percent of them have been drug abusers for more than two years,
with heroin being the overwhelming drug of choice.

Wang Peixian, the center's director, said patients are treated with methadone
when they first arrive. The second phase of treatment is psychological.
Addicts are lectured on the harm of drugs and how to ``set up a correct
outlook on life,'' she said.

Wang presented her program as nothing but successful. ``After treatment most
of them improved their health, gained weight, and through an education of
laws and regulations, they regret having been drug abusers and make up their
minds never to use drugs again,'' Wang said assuredly.

For Gao, escaping the lure of heroin won't be easy. ``But I have to overcome
it,'' he said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, National Copyright Thursday, May 15, 1997