Justice Chief Says Understanding Important in Tackling Problem

Drug testing in secondary schools must not be implemented rashly and must first be considered thoroughly, Secretary for Justice Wong Yan-lung said after meeting several hundred principals of primary and secondary schools yesterday.

Mr Wong said schools would not be "labelled" as a result of drug tests if they all conducted the same test.

The Action Committee Against Narcotics has proposed to the inter-departmental taskforce on young drug abuse - led by Mr Wong - that drug testing be done at schools with parents' consent, given the rising number of young drug abusers.

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A convicted dealer says ketamine use is now part of youth culture, and anti-drug rhetoric is a waste of breath.

For Chow Ho-yin, taking ketamine is as normal as having a cup of coffee in a cafe. Mr Chow, 24, says he had his first taste of the drug at a disco when he was a secondary student eight years ago.

He says he quickly "moved upward" to cocaine before becoming a trafficker in both drugs, eventually earning "HK$60,000 to HK$70,000" per month. His career ended when he was convicted of holding a small quantity of ketamine. He was sentenced to six months' rehabilitation.

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Voluntary drug testing at schools might be introduced after it was revealed that 60 per cent of young abusers have their first illegal drug experience before 16.

The government said it would consider introducing tests after Central Registry of Drug Abuse figures released yesterday showed that 1,226 regular drug abusers under 21 were reported in the first quarter this year, a 15.2 per cent surge from the 1,064 last year.

Of 876 registered abusers who revealed their age when they first took drugs, 556 said they were younger than 16. Nine per cent said they first took drugs when they were 11 or 12.

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Six people were executed in Yunnan and Henan provinces, and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region for dealing in large quantities of drugs in three separate cases, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) said yesterday.

In one case, Han Yongwan and Duan Biwu were involved in smuggling, trading and transporting more than 775 kg of heroin from February 2001 to September 2005, along the border areas of Myanmar, and Yunnan and Guangdong provinces.

Under the law, dealing in a minimum of 50 g of heroin warrants the death penalty in some provinces of China. The amount differs in other provinces.

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Beijing (AFP) - China has executed three drug dealers and sentenced at least seven others to death, state media reported on Wednesday, on the eve of the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The death penalties were among a series of harsh sentences handed down in more than 20 separate cases by courts from Shanghai in the east to Shenzhen in the south, the Xinhua news agency said.

Among the three executed in southeastern Fujian province was a drug dealer from Taiwan, identified as Tseng Fu-wen, it said.

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THE nation's new Anti-Drug Law focuses on treatment of drug addicts rather than punishment and asks the government to offer financial support, the director of the only compulsory rehabilitation center in Shanghai said.

Li Yu, director of the Shanghai Compulsory Rehabilitation Center, which is affiliated to the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, told Shanghai Daily that the number of drug addicts it treats rises about 5 percent every year.

He added that the center is now treating people addicted to newer drugs such as ecstasy and crystal methamphetamine hydrochloride, a powerful, synthetic stimulant commonly known as ice.

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Parents of foreign teenagers living in Beijing are accusing police of putting their heads in plastic bags and roughing them up if they complained during a drugs raid on a bar district.

Police swept two bars in Sanlitun, the most well-established bar and restaurant area for younger foreign and Chinese residents of the capital on Friday night.

They led out scores of revellers, including pupils from several of the city's numerous and expensive international private schools, as well as Chinese.

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Southwest China's Yunnan Province set up seven more methadone mobile clinics in 2007 in the rural areas bordering the Golden Triangle in an effort to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The province had intended to open 22 new clinics early last year but only 14 were set up by the end of 2007, bringing the total number of methadone clinics to 67 including eight mobile ones, said Zhang Ruimin, deputy director of the Yunnan Provincial Institute for Drug Abuse.

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Chinese lawmakers are expected to adopt the country's first anti-drug law to curb drug-related crime, reduce the soaring number of users and provide more appropriate care for under-aged addicts.

The law's final draft was "ready for adoption", the Law Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) told the 31st session of the NPC Standing Committee on its opening day Sunday, when the third and possibly final deliberation of the began.

The number of drug takers in China grew 35 percent in the five years to 2005 to reach 1.16 million, according to official police data.

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Authorities would consider enforcing stricter penalties for Hong Kong drug abusers caught on the mainland, Guangdong Provincial Narcotics Control Commission director Chen Shaobo said on Friday.

Hong Kong drug abusers arrested on the mainland are usually detained for 15 days before they are sent back to the SAR, he said.

"However, under the law, we can impose drug withdrawal program on the abusers, which can run up to between three months and one year. I strongly urge youngsters not to abuse drugs on the mainland," he added.

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A senior police officer warned yesterday that China faces an uphill battle in its fight against illegal narcotics, particularly given the increasing availability of new types of drugs.

Yang Fengrui, director of the Ministry of Public Security's narcotics control bureau, said in an online interview that much remained to be done to continue the authorities' successful two-year battle against drug use.

New types of drugs, like ice, ecstasy and ketamine, have been spreading at a tremendous speed across the nation and are posing a great threat to social stability, he said.

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The country's top court announced yesterday that it had approved the death penalty for seven drug traffickers.

Three principals of a cross-border drug crime, Yan Hanlong, Li Zibin and Xiong Shiwei, were sentenced to death for the "extremely huge amount" of 42 kg of heroin they smuggled from Myanmar.

Wang Guangyou organized heroin trafficking by getting villagers in Guizhou Province to transport 806 grams of heroin from Kunming, Yunnan Province.

Zhang Hong'an, who had long been engaged in cross-border drug crimes as the leader of a trafficking gang.

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AIDS prevention and the fight against narcotics should be a compulsory part of primary and secondary school education, a national symposium has suggested.

The fight against drug addiction, one of the main causes of HIV infection, should focus on prevention and target the youth, it said.

The main organizers of the Ninth National Anti-Narcotics Symposium were China Research Institute for Science Popularization, Soong Ching Ling Foundation, Wu Jieping Medical Foundation and the US-based Lin Ze Xu Foundation.

The symposium's practical implications are exceptionally important, former vice-chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee Wu Jieping said in a statement, asserting that the campaign against drugs and AIDS is a social rather than institutional project.

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China's top court is mulling a judicial interpretation to the criminal law to cope with the spiraling number of cases involving new drugs, a senior court official has said.

Gao Guijun, presiding judge of the Fifth Criminal Court under the Supreme People's Court, said a new judicial interpretation detailing the penalties for smuggling, producing and transporting new drugs will be soon announced.

An interpretation made in 2000 spells out penalties only for traditional drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

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China will set up a national surveillance network to monitor the production, distribution and use of anesthetic and psychotropic drugs, China's drug watchdog announced here Monday.

The network, which has already been piloted in 11 provinces and municipalities, would be fully operational by the end of this year, the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) said.

The administration said the network would enable drug watchdogs at all levels to detect irregularities in the production and distribution of anesthetic and psychotropic drugs to prevent problems at an early stage.

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Drug traffickers are using more covert means, new types of narcotics have hit the "market" and the number of addicts is on the rise, police and court officials said Monday.

All provinces, irrespective of whether they are near the border or inland face the threat of narcotics, said Liu Yuejin, deputy director of the Ministry of Public Security's Narcotics Control Bureau.

The situation is still "grave" because drugs are still entering China from the neighboring regions and the number of illegal drug processing plants has increased in the country, he said.

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Because of increasing pressure at work, low risk-awareness, peer pressure and easy access, club drugs are becoming increasingly popular among Chinese youth.

Xiao Liu, a college freshman studying in Beijing, frequents nightclubs on weekends. She often sees groups of young people taking drugs and then dancing frantically in drug-induced crazes. She would shun them, because she believed they were "dangerous" people.

These drugs, collectively termed "new-type drugs", or "club drugs", include marijuana, MDMA - a synthetic and psychoactive drug - and ketamine - a psychoactive known to induce dream-like states and hallucinations.

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China can be proud of its fight against drug abuse when it marks International Day on Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking today.

The rate of increase in the number of new drug addicts in the country last year saw an impressive decrease, down from 30 percent in 2000 to 5.8 percent.

Latest statistics from the Ministry of Public Security also show that the number of registered drug users nationwide was 803,900 by April this year, compared to 1.16 million in 2006.

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The Xintang township government in Zengcheng, a suburban city of Guangzhou, has issued a notice banning the distribution of land to families whose members are under investigation for drug abuse.

It is the first township in the southern province to issue such a ban. It is also requiring all local families to sign a contract or promise to avoid drugs, in the next few months.

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The Foreign Ministry has warned Thais not to get involved in drug trafficking in China - or expect long, hard prison sentences.

The ministry warning cited the heavy punishment likely to be taken on Thais if they are caught in China for being involved in drugs trafficking.

The Thai consulate-general for Guangzhou and Shanghai said 20 Thais had been arrested in China since mid-2006.

Customs officers at the two cities' airports have now imposed stringent surveillance on Thai passengers travelling from third countries - especially from South Asia and the Middle East, with a transit in Bangkok and Hong Kong before entering China, the reports said.

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