CHINA OFFERS HARSH CURE FOR NATION'S DRUG ADDICTS

BEIJING (AP) -- The heroin trail snakes up from China's borders -- and into
its towns and cities and through the veins of its addicts. But it stops at
the Beijing Police Compulsory Drug Detoxification Center.

Here, behind brick walls emblazoned with slogans such as "Love Life," the
state makes inmates in striped blue-and-white pajamas say no to drugs.

Police took foreign reporters on a brief and controlled tour of the center
recently -- a sign that China is beginning to treat its growing drug
problem with increasing openness rather than as an embarrassment best kept
hidden.

The Communist Party shut down opium dens and declared the nation drug- free
after seizing power in 1949. Today, all that has changed. Heroin,
marijuana, amphetamines, Ecstasy -- all are available and abused. Two
decades of economic reforms have given people money to buy drugs and opened
borders so traffickers can reach the masses.

China's response to the problem is Draconian. Traffickers are often
executed. Users are packed off to detoxification centers and labor camps --
67,000 of them in the first six months of this year, says the
government-run Xinhua News Agency.

Police need not consult courts -- a urine test and an admittance of drug
use is enough for them to send people away.

One 28-year-old inmate at the Beijing center, who came to the Chinese
capital on vacation, said she was out dancing when police tested her. The
test revealed traces of Ecstasy, a so-called "designer drug" popular at
clubs in the United States. The woman, requesting anonymity, said she took
the drug in Guangzhou, a southern city where she works for an
air-conditioning company.

"I hadn't taken any in Beijing, but it still showed up," she said. "They
said: 'You have to go to rehabilitation."'

Inmates who can afford it must pay -- $845 for three months, more if they
stay longer, said the camp's director, Lu Qiulin. Most inmates have used
heroin. Less than 10 percent stay off drugs after release, Lu said.

Reporters were shown inmates marching in ranks and playing basketball in a
courtyard. "Stay away from drugs! Love life, family well-being, social
stability!" was written in big Chinese characters on the yard wall.

Reporters also were shown inmates singing karaoke, working out on exercise
machines, playing table tennis, and listening to a lecture about the
dangers of drugs. The tour lasted 90 minutes, nearly half of it taken up by
a police briefing.

In the past decade, the number of known drug addicts has risen from 70,000
to 860,000 last year, says the Ministry of Public Security. Experts say the
actual figure probably tops 4 million; most are under age 35.

"The big problem is among young people," said Pi Yijun, a drug expert at
Shanghai's China University of Politics and Law. "They have grown up with a
lifestyle their parents didn't have, and drugs are a temptation that they
want to experience."

Heroin and opium are most widely abused. One reason is availability: China
borders two of the world's largest cultivators of opium poppies: Myanmar
and Afghanistan.

History makes drugs a hot-button issue. China still recalls bitterly how
British traders, backed by gunboats from their government, forced opium
onto the Chinese in the 19th century. The two countries fought two wars
over the issue.

Today, young people in prosperous coastal cities like Shanghai are behind a
surge in the use of factory-made drugs such as "ice," a powerful stimulant,
and Ecstasy -- which the Chinese call yaotouwan,or "head-shaking pills."

Department-store worker Jia Jixiang smoked heroin for six years, spending
as much as $36 a day -- a small fortune in a country where the average city
worker earns $120 a month.

"There were tensions at home. I was annoyed. I started smoking it," he said.

Jia lived with his parents, who turned him in. Police sent him to the
center. After two months there, Jia said, he is clean and determined to
stay that way.

"I have decided that I will no longer smoke, absolutely," he said. "I've
become a person again."