CHINA'S DRUG ADDICTS SURPASS 1 MILLION

BEIJING - China said Monday that it's wrestling with deepening problems of
domestic narcotics abuse and now has more than 1 million drug addicts.

Officials blamed soaring opium production in Afghanistan and the arrival of
multinational drug gangs in China for some of the surge in drug use.

"The domestic consumption of narcotics is growing, and the kinds of drugs
that are consumed have diversified," said Luo Feng, vice minister of Public
Security, who is the nation's second-ranking counterdrug official.

Luo said expanding problems with narcotics abuse impose "heavy losses" to
China's economy amounting to billions of dollars a year and that crime
rates climb with drug use.

In an annual report, China's National Narcotics Control Commission said the
number of drug addicts rose from about 900,000 people in 2002 to 1.05
million people in 2003, 740,000 of them heroin users. Use of narcotics and
synthetic drugs continued to increase, especially among youth, the report said.

The U.S. State Department, in a report on international narcotics control
issued Monday, said a "rave" culture has developed in major Chinese cities
in recent years, with young Chinese using the drug "ecstasy" and
amphetamine-type stimulants in nightclubs.

Chinese authorities have put the clubs under tighter scrutiny, "but results
have been limited," the report said.

Amphetamine-type stimulants are produced in China in illegal drug
laboratories. China also is an important source for natural ephedra, used
in methamphetamine, and is one of the world's largest producers of
synthetic ephedra, the State Department report said.

Drug use in China, practically wiped out after the Communist Party took
power in 1949, made a comeback as the country opened up its economy.
Security agents combat the problem by killing dozens of suspected
traffickers each year in mass executions.

But China shares borders with some of the world's major heroin- and
opium-producing spots, including the Golden Triangle (encompassing remote
areas of Burma, also known as Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and China) and the
Golden Crescent (which includes Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia).

China said 80 percent of the heroin produced in the Golden Triangle flows
overland through China "by vehicle, couriers and mail." Traffickers bring
heroin over the Himalayas through India and Nepal, the report added.

It called opium production in Afghanistan, which shares a small northwest
border with China, "an expanding threat to China." Opium, which is refined
from the poppy plant, is also the raw material for making heroin.

China issued sharply higher figures on opium production in Afghanistan than
those used by U.S. officials. China's report said opium production last
year "exceeded 4,000 tons."

The Bush administration acknowledges that opium production doubled last
year in Afghanistan. But Drug Enforcement Administration chief Karen P.
Tandy told a House of Representatives panel Thursday that Afghanistan
produced 2,865 tons of opium last year.

Drug gangs building mobile laboratories to produce methamphetamine, a
synthetic compound known in Asia as "ice," are particularly active in
Guangdong and Fujian provinces along China's southeastern coast, the report
said. A five-month crackdown there that ended in January "wiped out 139
drug-trafficking groups," it said.

In an indication of the growing magnitude of "ice" production, security
agents in Guangzhou, China, on May 11 seized 4.3 tons of the drug in one
raid, more than the amount seized the entire previous year, the report said.

Three months later in Guangzhou, authorities found 4.2 tons of
methaqualone, a barbiturate, hidden in air conditioners headed for South
Africa, it said.

As international narcotics gangs take root in the country, Chinese
counterdrug authorities increasingly cooperate with counterparts in other
countries, including the DEA, which has maintained resident agents in China
since 1999.

Most notably, Chinese, U.S. and Philippine counterdrug agents in early
February smashed a ring allegedly smuggling 651 pounds of "ice" to the
Philippines. The drug deal had been partially plotted in Laos, the report said.

In 2003, China said it arrested 63,700 drug suspects.

Some 220,000 drug addicts underwent compulsory rehabilitation, the report
said, and 61,500 were given forced labor, "which effectively reduced the
relapse rate and harms to the society."