CHINA SHOWS OFF ITS FIGHT AGAINST DRUGS

Tests, Treatment Are Among Tools

BEIJING - The heroin trail snakes up from China's borders, 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 like ''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
Wednesday, a sign that China is beginning to treat its worsening drug
problem with increasing openness, rather than as an embarrassment best hidden.

China's Communists shut down opium dens and declared the nation drug- free
after they seized power in 1949.

But 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 that traffickers can reach
them.

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, according to the
government-run Xinhua News Agency.

Police need not consult courts: A urine test positive for drugs and an
admission of drug use are enough to be sent 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 found traces of ecstasy.

The woman, who did not give her name, says she took the drug in Guangzhou,
a southern city where she works for an air conditioning firm.

''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 used heroin. Less than 10 percent stay off drugs after their
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 large characters on the yard wall.

There were also 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, the Ministry of Public Security says. Specialists say
the number of regular users probably tops 4 million; most are under age 35.

''The big problem is among young people,'' said Pi Yijun, a drug specialist
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,'' Pi said.

Heroin and opium are most widely abused. One reason is their availability:
China borders two of the world's largest opium poppy- growing countries,
Myanmar and Afghanistan.

China still recalls bitterly how British traders, backed by gunboats from
their government, forced opium on China in the 19th century. The two
countries fought two wars over the issue.

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