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. [continues 332 words]
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. [continues 103 words]
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. [continues 381 words]
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. [continues 536 words]
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. [continues 107 words]
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. [continues 373 words]
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. [continues 284 words]
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. [continues 260 words]
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. [end]
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. [continues 88 words]
KASHGAR, China -- The story of Almijan, a gaunt 31-year-old former silk trader with nervous eyes, has all the markings of a public health nightmare. A longtime heroin addiction caused him to burn through $60,000 in life savings. Today, he says, all of his drug friends have AIDS and yet continue to share needles and to have sex with a range of women - -- with their wives, with prostitutes, or as he said, "with whoever." For now, Mr. Almijan, whose name like many here is a single word, seems to have escaped the nightmare. His father carted him off to a drug treatment center hundreds of miles away in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region here in China's far west. [continues 953 words]
The poor but scenic Yunnan province is in the forefront of China's battle against AIDS. IT is a quiet morning at the Da Shu Ying Health Centre, an unobtrusive building tucked away in a warren of lower-middle class residential housing in downtown Kunming. The excited chattering of children playing at the adjoining primary school wafts into the clinic's foyer. A few staff outfitted in bright white lab coats swish around with patient files. At around 9.30 a.m. the first patient of the day, Ou, walks in. His hair is combed back neatly and his expression is a little tense. He looks neither to the left nor to the right and heads straight for the medicine counter where he hands the two attendants a prescription. A few seconds later he is given a paper cup, the lime-green contents of which he gulps down gratefully in one swallow. His expression lightens and he exhales heavily in relief as he sits down on a nearby bench. [continues 2138 words]
CHINA has become the most important trafficking route for illegal drugs in the Asia-Pacific region and may have as many as 12 million drug addicts. A report commissioned by the Australian National Council on Drugs, to be made public in Sydney tomorrow, says Burma is the region's main producer of opium, heroin and amphetamine-type drugs, and that most heroin produced there is now trafficked through China, rather than through Thailand, as previously. The Burma-China route has been joined by new routes from Afghanistan - - the world's biggest opium producer - into western China, particularly through the Xinjiang autonomous region. [continues 352 words]
PUBLIC health authorities in south China's Guangdong Province said they will open 30 more methadone replacement clinics over the next few months. Huang Fei, deputy director of Guangdong Provincial Health Bureau, said procedures for construction of 27 of the planned new methadone clinics had been assessed by a provincial-level expert panel and are now awaiting approval by the State. The new methadone clinics will be built in at least 16 cities, including three in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, according to the official. [continues 119 words]
Changsha, China -- They line up here every day, at the new Tianxin district storefront clinic, and wait patiently for their methadone. Among them, a man who identifies himself as Wang swirls a clear plastic cup of lime-green liquid, brings it to his lips and swallows. At the site of this pilot project in HIV prevention, Wang could blend in with any of the shop owners and businessmen in this busy commercial neighborhood of Hunan province's capital city. He has been coming to the clinic every afternoon, since shortly after it opened in February, hoping that methadone will break his addiction to heroin, keep him out of trouble with the law and ultimately protect him from AIDS. [continues 2012 words]
While International Anti-Drug Day last week was marked in the West by much hand-wringing over the evils of addictive chemical substances, the Chinese authorities addressed the day in far more robust fashion. Several drug dealers were taken out to execution grounds and shot. Just how many convicted drugs traffickers and producers got a bullet in the back of the head in honour of the day is difficult to say. The government-controlled China Daily online newspaper contains reports indicating there were executions in several provinces, but it is impossible to know if these reports tell the full story. One article said in Shanghai 1,300 people were invited to a university sports stadium to witness the conclusion of the trial of three drug traffickers who "were taken to an undisclosed location in the suburbs to be shot immediately after they were sentenced." [end]
KUNMING, China This scenic capital of China's southern Yunnan Province has earned itself a more unsavory sobriquet - China's AIDS capital. Historically, this multi-ethnic region of stunning valleys and gorges, including a site locals say is the fabled region of Shangri-La, stood out in mostly Han China for its uniquely diverse culture and beauty. Now the province, where China's first HIV cases were discovered in the early 1990s, is home to about 30,000 of the 140,000 Chinese who are HIV- positive, according to official reports. And that is almost certainly an underestimate, said Yang Maobin, director of Daytop, an HIV/AIDS care center in Kunming. Experts say that in reality there could be as many as 200,000 HIV cases in Yunnan and 300,000 more in the neighboring autonomous regions of Guangxi and western Xinjiang. [continues 944 words]
KUNMING, China -- This scenic capital of China's southern Yunnan Province has earned itself a more unsavory sobriquet -- China's AIDS capital. Historically, this multi-ethnic region of stunning valleys and gorges, including a site locals say is the fabled region of Shangri-La, stood out in mostly Han China for its uniquely diverse culture and beauty. Now the province, where China's first HIV cases were discovered in the early 1990s, is home to about 30,000 of the 140,000 Chinese who are HIV-positive, according to official reports. And that's almost certainly an underestimate, said Yang Maobin, director of Daytop, a HIV/AIDS care center in Kunming. [continues 1010 words]
BEIJING - Chinese and U.S. agents seized more than 300 pounds of cocaine smuggled from Colombia, authorities said Tuesday - a record bust for China that underscores how South American narcotics gangs are aggressively moving into Asia. Nine people were arrested. Chinese television footage showed a locker stacked high with dozens of bricks of smuggled cocaine, some with a yin yang symbol embossed on the solid white blocks. The suspects include two Colombian citizens arrested in Hong Kong and mainland China, said Liu Guangping, spokesman for the Customs General Administration of China. [continues 213 words]
HONG KONG: A sentencing hearing is due to begin tomorrow for three Australians, including two teenagers, charged with smuggling heroin in Hong Kong. The defendants, in custody since April 12 when they were arrested in a hotel room, have pleaded guilty to being smugglers, or "drug mules," who intended to carry heroin from Hong Kong to Sydney. The trio face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a fine of $A900,000, prosecutor Derek Lai said. The accused - all from Sydney - included Hutchinson Tran, an unemployed 21-year-old, and Rachel Ann Diaz, a 17-year-old hairstylist. The third defendant could not be identified because of his age. He was 15 at the time of the offence. The three were arrested in a hotel room with 701g of heroin. [end]
RUILI, China -- This ancient road has had many names: Old tea-horse trail. The Burma Road. Route 320. But the label that matters most today is one that appears on no sign at all: the AIDS road. Past truck-stop brothels and through disease-ravaged cities and villages in China's far southwest Yunnan province, this two-lane road carves the path of an HIV epidemic that is growing faster than international health officials previously thought. This is the main road through the epicenter of AIDS in the world's most populous country, where a new national study shows that 200 people are being infected every day. It is a central artery through which sex, drugs and trade are spreading the virus into previously untouched swaths of the population, researchers say. [continues 1735 words]
BEIJING -- China has resumed controversial brain surgery intended to cure drug users of their addiction, less than two years after it was suspended. It claims that the "hole in the head" operations are now being performed as part of a controlled experiment. More than 500 of the operations, in which parts of a patient's brain are destroyed using a heated needle, were performed across China between 2000 and the end of last year -- when the health ministry, faced with growing criticism, said their outcome was too uncertain for them to continue. [continues 319 words]
China has resumed controversial brain surgery intended to cure drug users of their addiction, just a year after it was suspended. It claims that the "hole in the head" operations are now being performed as part of a controlled experiment. More than 500 of the operations, in which parts of a patient's brain are destroyed using a heated needle, were performed across China between 2000 and the end of last year - when the health ministry, faced with growing criticism, said their outcome was too uncertain for them to continue. [continues 705 words]
SHANGHAI, China - China is stepping up work on laws to counter money-laundering and financing of terrorist operations, state newspapers reported Friday, citing a senior central bank official. A draft of an anti-money-laundering law will be submitted to China's national legislature at the "appropriate time," Xiang Junbo, a vice governor of the People's Bank of China, told a conference in Beijing. An anti-terrorism law that includes sections on money laundering has also been drawn up, Xiang said. [continues 334 words]
A "people's war" on narcotics in China has turned into a campaign against designer drugs after police found a surge in usage of ecstasy, ketamine and methamphetamine, or ice, among urban professionals. In a shift that may be down to a booming economy and the growing influence of globalised culture, Chinese authorities said this week the focus of their anti-drugs campaigns has widened from disadvantaged social groups - such as minorities, prostitutes and the unemployed - to affluent white-collar workers. [continues 339 words]
KUALA LUMPUR: Thirty-eight Malaysians, including three who are on death row for drug trafficking, are being held in several prisons and detention centres in China. Sources said two of the Malaysians sentenced to death were arrested in November 1999 while the other was arrested in December 2000. They said all three were sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle 'ice' (syabu) into China, which has tough laws on drug trafficking. The sources said the Chinese authorities have identified South-East Asians as being actively involved in the trafficking of drugs into the mainland. [continues 148 words]
TOKYO - The HIV/AIDS epidemic in China appears to be spreading along drug trafficking routes extending from Yunnan Province, a trading center connecting China to Southeast Asia, researchers said Monday at National Institute of Infectious Disease's International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. The team headed by Yutaka Takebe from the institute's AIDS Research Center investigated the strains of HIV in patients in Yunnan and estimated their relationship with strains in India and other neighboring counties. The researchers discovered two strains of HIV - one found in Thailand in 1988 and another that was hybrid of strains found in India and Thailand. They also found two new subtypes, both derived from the Indian-Thai hybrid, in Xinjiang Uighur and Guang Xizhuan regions. The researchers believe the strains have traveled from one of the world's largest heroin producing regions, the Golden Triangle, in areas of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. [end]
With young people making up 70 per cent of China's drug users, to curb the spread of drugs among China's youth has become an urgent task in the country's wider war on drugs. At the Seventh Forum on Juvenile Drug and AIDS Prevention Education held on Friday in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, experts and educators alike urged the government to step up anti-drug education among the young. According to statistics provided by the National Narcotics Control Commission, China is now home to 791,000 drug users, a growth of 6.8 per cent over last year. [continues 332 words]
The number of drug users in China is on the rise. According to the Beijing Daily Messenger, there are 791 thousand drug users in China, a seven per cent increase compared with 2003. Most of them are under 35. The paper says that Chinese government is going to step up the fight against drugs. The plan is for tougher laws, encouraging people to report suspected drug users, setting up supervision and evaluation systems and promoting international anti-drug cooperation. [end]
Nearly 10,000 Beijing residents braved the pouring rain and walked 12 kilometres to highlight the danger of drugs. Yesterday's participants came from all walks of life, although most were college students, to mark International Anti-Drugs Day. According to statistics from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, nearly 3,000 drug addicts in Beijing were sent to mandatory drug rehabilitation centres last year. A further 9,000 addicts went to rehab centres voluntarily. Statistics from the Ministry of Public Security indicate the number of registered drug addicts in China reached more than 790,000 by the end of last year. More than 2,200 of the 2,863 counties were found to have drug users. [continues 441 words]
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. [continues 74 words]
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." [continues 283 words]
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. [continues 369 words]
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. [continues 454 words]
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. [continues 341 words]
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." [continues 471 words]
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. [continues 504 words]
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). [continues 1344 words]
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. [continues 231 words]
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. [continues 205 words]
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. [continues 832 words]
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. [continues 200 words]
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. [continues 256 words]
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. [end]
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. [continues 211 words]
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. [continues 373 words]
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 ." [continues 558 words]
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. [continues 942 words]
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. [continues 443 words]
Inside China
