Some 10,000 people marched through Beijing's streets Sunday to support China's anti-drug day, as the nation burned illegal caches of heroin, hash and other drugs seized by police, an official and state media said.

China Central Television showed police in several cities setting fire to large urns filled with drugs, including a cache of 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) worth of narcotics in the southern city of Nanchang.

Marchers in Beijing wore matching white visors and pastel-colored raincoats and chanted slogans as they marched about 20 kilometers (12 miles) through a morning downpour from the Summer Palace in the city's northwest into the center of Beijing.

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Dr Wang Guisong is eagerly awaiting the chance to perform brain surgery on drug addicts - a practice the Ministry of Health banned last October, but is expected to allow in the future under tight guidelines.

Wang, who works in the neurosurgery department at Renji Hospital, is one of the leading experts on the surgery in Shanghai.

"Using medicine alone can solve physical addiction, but it is unable to solve the mental addiction," he said. "Brain surgery is really the last resort for drug addicts and their families. Many broke and distraught parents have come to me for help for their addicted children."

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A new narcotic control law is being mapped out as part of China's efforts to combat drug use, production and trafficking.

A draft of the law, listing drug taking as a crime, is currently being scrutinized by experts, according to the China National Narcotics Control Commission (NNCC).

"Hopefully they can be submitted to the State Council for a first review by the end of this year," said Li Yuanzheng, deputy director with the NNCC Office.

At the moment China has no laws specifically aimed at tackling narcotics. Although existing laws acknowledge the illegal possession of drugs, they fail to classify drug taking as a crime.

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KUNMING: China's anti-drug frontier, Yunnan Province, said it had witnessed a dangerous surge in "ice" trafficking in the first five months of this year.

Between January and May province authorities seized 62.1 per cent more methamphetamine, or "ice," than in the same period last year, the local narcotics control commission said on Monday.

By comparison, the amount of heroin seized fell by 28.5 per cent during the same period year-on-year.

Despite the fall, heroin still accounts for most of the drug trafficking in Yunnan, which borders the infamous Golden Triangle where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet.

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SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- In an aggressive new anti-AIDS push, China's Health Ministry is urging the promotion of free condoms and needle exchanges - strategies previously considered taboo by the conservative communist government.

The proposed guidelines urge local governments to tailor those measures to high-risk groups in one of the boldest nationwide campaigns yet against the disease.

The most striking proposal calls for combining methadone treatment with needle exchanges to promote safe behavior among drug users - a group almost completely ignored in the past.

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Chinese officials issued an unusual appeal to the public yesterday for help fighting drug trafficking, acknowledging in a nationally televised news conference that they have failed to stop surging narcotics abuse despite repeated crackdowns.

Drug smuggling and the difficulty of fighting it are rising as a result of globalization and freer trade, the officials said, citing the seizure this month of 400kg of the party drug ketamine brought in from India via the Middle East.

"Although we've made a lot of achievements, the spread of drug problems remains serious," said Yang Fengrui, secretary-general of the National Narcotics Control Commission. "Heroin use is down in some areas, but the use of new drugs such as ecstasy, marijuana and others is increasing."

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Drugs and drug-related crime in China are still a blot on the Chinese landscape despite a people's war waged against it a year ago.

In the first four months of the year, China arrested 19,000 people responsible for 24,000 drug-related criminal cases, said a senior official with the office of the National Narcotics Control Commission in Beijing yesterday.

Police seized 3,859 kilograms of heroin, 1,005 kilograms of "ice" and 198,000 tablets of "Ecstasy" in the period, Yang Fengrui, permanent secretary-general of the commission, said.

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A senior official says China's law enforcement departments have successfully mobilized ordinary citizens in the fight against drugs.

China has solved 24,000 cases of drug-related crimes in the first four months this year, thanks to active participation from the general public in the anti-drug campaign.

A senior official from the National Narcotics Control Commission, Yang Fengrui said China's law enforcement departments have successfully mobilized ordinary citizens in the fight against drugs.

He said about 20,000 drug criminals have been captured and more than 3,800 kilograms of heroin have been confiscated between January and April.

The official notes, however, the campaign against drugs remains tough for China, and anti-drug departments will continue to call on people's participation to prevent drug-related crimes.

[end]

One plus one equals two. It's simple arithmetic, isn't it? By all accounts, it is. Well, if your answer is that straight, you'd have a problem getting into one man's crack unit, the unit that recently netted the SAR's biggest haul of party drug ketamine. Because for him, one plus one plus one amounts to synergy that exceeds the multiples of one.

Since the war against drug trafficking syndicates is more a battle of wisdom, "one plus one must equal more than just two" if investigators are to succeed in breaking cases that are getting increasingly sophisticated, says Ben Leung, head of Customs Drug Investigation Bureau (CDIB).

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Xinhua -- A senior officials meeting on combating transnational crimes and maintaining social order in the border area of China and Myanmar opened here Wednesday.

The four-day meeting, which is the first of its kind, was attended by visiting Chinese Deputy Minister of Public Security Zhao Yongji and Myanmar Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Brigadier-General Phone Swe.

The meeting discussed and exchanged views on strengthening cooperation between security and police forces of the two countries in jointly combating transnational crimes and settlementof issues existing in the sector.

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Police in Hong Kong believe a massive increase in cocaine seizures this year shows South American drug barons are targeting the city as a growth market, a press report said Sunday.

Seizures of the drug in 2004 jumped almost tenfold to 60 kilograms from 6.6 kilograms in 2003.

Police said the shift in focus toward the region has been prompted by market saturation in Europe and the United States, as well as the boom in Southeast Asian economies, reported the South China Morning Post.

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BANLAO, China - The road to this town, treacherous and narrow, ends after kilometers of knee-deep mud on a mountain path that looks down upon the clouds. It was market day, and the gently sloping main street was so choked with people and goods changing hands that for all the tattered clothes and sun-creased faces, the place radiated a measure of prosperity.

The magic of the larger market that has lifted so much of China out of poverty has bypassed most of this region, where peasants live as they have for generations, carrying firewood on their backs and farming the steep, terraced slopes by hand. But Banlao, otherwise lost in the shadows of tall mountains, where Myanmar, formerly Burma, looms visible in the distance, has another source of wealth.

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To keep teenagers away from drugs, a new course has been written into the curriculum for primary and secondary schools in Beijing.

Drugs and AIDS came under the spotlight on World AIDS Day on December 1.

Although human beings have a longer history of fighting drug addiction than AIDS, the task remains herculean. Drugs are beginning to attack the vulnerable, especially the young.

Statistics from the National Drug Control Commission show that the number of drug addicts below the age of 35 accounts for 70 per cent of all addicts. They have already become a part of schools, targeting impressionable teenagers.

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GEJIU, China - At first, addicts couldn't believe it. The city opened a clinic right on the main road, where it offered something called methadone, a drink that supposedly eliminated the craving for heroin, for less than $1.

"People weren't sure," said Zhang Liren, an addict for 10 years. They thought it might be a trap.

But word spread that the drink worked. Now, every afternoon, more than 160 addicts stream into the tiny clinic for a shot of a bright green liquid that tastes vaguely of lime.

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BEIJING -- Drug smuggler Zhu Zhiwei was sentenced to death in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou for smuggling heroin to Canada, state media said yesterday.

Accomplices Ou Weineng and Yang Weiming received life imprisonment. The trio colluded with drug dealers to smuggle heroin to Canada via Hong Kong and to smuggle heroin from abroad to sell in China between June 2000 and December 2002, the Xinhua news agency said. About 100 kilograms of heroin was involved.

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BEJING (AP) -- A top Chinese anti-drug official on Wednesday defended his country's frequent use of the death penalty against drug traffickers amid stepped-up efforts to control growing narcotics use.

The comments by an official of the National Narcotics Control Commission follow appeals by human rights groups for China, which executes hundreds of traffickers a year, to abandon the death penalty.

China had more than one million users of illegal drugs last year, up five per cent from 2002, said Yang Fengrui, the commission's deputy secretary general.

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Saturday marks the 17th International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

Commemorating the day with slogan "Avoid Drugs and Participate in Drug Control," China is sending out a massage that the anti-drug campaign is an all-out war that calls for the mobilization and involvement of every social sector and individual.

Drug abuse, rarely heard of in China when the first such day was observed in 1987, has since become a big social ailment in the country.

Now, with the number of registered drug users exceeding 1 million and 80 per cent of the nation's cities and counties existing with drug problems of varying degrees, China is facing an uphill task. It is a battle China cannot afford to lose.

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Zhao Zeng Was Once A Drug Addict.

But now the 32-year-old man looks hale and hearty, not at all like he did when he was on narcotics.

With his hair set with gel, which makes him look pretty young and energetic, Zhao shocks many when he tells them that he was once on drugs for 10 years.

The change took place last October when an emaciated Zhao entered a Beijing voluntary addiction treatment centre and volunteered to try a new therapy called "community therapy ."

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When he decided to put his past as a drug addict behind him, Zhao started an MMT course in a clinic in Gejiu, Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Every day, hundreds of addicts take the prescribed drug methadone - a synthetic opiate - which is used at the clinic as a maintenance treatment for heroin addiction.

Feeling reborn after his painstaking struggle, Zhao, in his 30s, now works as a volunteer counsellor at the clinic to help others recover and lead a meaningful life. It is said that once a methadone patient has successfully shaken heroin, their appearance and lifestyle can return to normal.

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Xinhua -- Dozens of drug dealers were sentenced to death in a series of drug-related criminal cases across China as the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking draws near.

In southwestern Yunnan province, Tan Minglin and three other people convicted of smuggling or selling five tons of drugs, including heroin and ephedrine, were executed after having all their belongings confiscated on Friday.

South China's Guangdong province cracked a series of such drug- related criminal cases. Li Qingyuan was sentenced to death while his colleague Lu Guowu was sentenced a two-year stay of execution with all his property confiscated. Tan Zhong'an, another accomplice, was given a seven-year jail term and fined 10,000 yuan (US$1,200) by a local court in Shenzhen city, which neighbors on Hong Kong.

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