Source: Nando.net Pubdate: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 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