BEIJING -- Some 17 drug traffickers were executed Saturday in China's southwestern Chongqing and eastern Shanghai municipalities to mark International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, state media reported. The Chongqing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court sentenced 16 criminals to death on charges of drug trafficking in a public trial Saturday, Xinhua news agency said. Since last year the municipal public security department has cracked down on 30 heroin-smuggling cases, arresting 5,450 suspects and seizing a total of 135.5 kilograms of heroin. [continues 182 words]
China has sentenced dozens of drug dealers to death ahead of the International Day Against Drug Abuse, despite a chorus of protests by human rights groups, state media has reported. In the south-western city of Chongqing alone, 16 drug traffickers received death sentences in a public trial on Saturday, the designated international anti-drug day, the official Xinhua news agency reported. In Shanghai, one man was executed for smuggling 1.8 kg of heroin into the city from Burma, it said. [continues 237 words]
HONG KONG -- Hong Kong customs officials arrested five people for allegedly ordering marijuana by mail from Canada with a total local market value of about 2.1 million Hong Kong dollars ($361,859 Cdn), officials and news reports said. The Sing Tao Daily newspaper reported Sunday that the cannabis was in boxes purporting to contain ginseng tea. Officers found seven kilograms of the drug in several mail packages between April 8 and last Friday, Hong Kong's Customs and Excise Department said in a statement Saturday. The government statement didn't provide further information on the five suspects arrested. It also didn't say whether they had been charged. [end]
A nationwide campaign to fight against illegal narcotics will be launched from April to September to attack the problem at the source, a senior public security official said on Friday. Police are vowing to crack down on a number of drug rings and networks at home and abroad as well as demolishing large number of underground drug processing factories, Vice-Minister of Public Security Luo Feng told a televised conference. Luo's words are a strong signal that China will continue its anti-drug fight this year. [continues 235 words]
Three drug traffickers were sentenced to death on Friday in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, said a Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court official. And another six members of the same drug gang were sentenced to life in jail. Sentenced to death were Yu Zhuoxiong, Guo Mingqing and Chen Yuhan. Cheng Junyong, Fang Xiaochong, Lu Yaozong, Chen Xiongwen, Luo Jiaxiong and He Zhonghong were sentenced to life in jail. Wen Qicheng, Liang Kairong and Li Yanfei, another three accomplices were sentenced to terms between 8 to 15 years. [continues 203 words]
BEIJING - China said yesterday it is wrestling with deepening problems of domestic narcotics abuse and now has more than 1 million drug addicts. Officials blamed soaring opium production in Afghanistan and the arrival of multinational drug gangs in China for some of the surge in drug use. "The domestic consumption of narcotics is growing, and the kinds of drugs that are consumed have diversified," said Luo Feng, vice minister of Public Security, the nation's second-ranking counter-drug official. [continues 220 words]
BEIJING - China said Monday that it's wrestling with deepening problems of domestic narcotics abuse and now has more than 1 million drug addicts. Officials blamed soaring opium production in Afghanistan and the arrival of multinational drug gangs in China for some of the surge in drug use. "The domestic consumption of narcotics is growing, and the kinds of drugs that are consumed have diversified," said Luo Feng, vice minister of Public Security, who is the nation's second-ranking counterdrug official. [continues 624 words]
BEIJING (Kyodo) A 61-year-old Japanese man was sentenced to death by a district court in the Chinese city of Shenyang earlier this month on charges of trying to smuggle 1.25 kg of stimulant drugs from China to Japan, sources close to the case said Saturday. The man, who has not been named, is the first Japanese to be given a death penalty that was not suspended in China, according to Japanese authorities. Since being sentenced on Feb. 3, the defendant has appealed to a higher court and the hearing will take place within two months, the sources said, adding that his execution will take place relatively soon if the appeal court upholds the initial ruling. [continues 296 words]
SHANGHAI (AP)--China has more than 1 million drug addicts, most of them under age 35 - a crisis that is costing the country billions of dollars a year, contributing to the spread of AIDS and hurting social stability, state media reported Friday. Top law-enforcement officials meeting in Beijing reported that almost three-quarters of China's 1.05 million registered drug addicts at the end of 2003 were under age 35. Many were unemployed, migrant workers or farmers, the official Xinhua News Agency and state-run newspapers reported. [continues 200 words]
A woman had been sentenced to death and her accomplice thrown in jail for life after police made the single largest haul of heroin in Beijing for more than 50 years, state media said. The ruling was handed down on Ma Xiuqin, a 31-year-old woman from north-west Gansu province, and her accomplice Zhang Ganiang, 32, on Sunday by the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court, the China Daily reported. Their arrests came after police in Beijing received a tip-off last June from their Gansu colleagues about a drug ring operating between the two areas and subsequently arrested the women, seizing 13.2kg of heroin. [continues 175 words]
Despite opium poppy eradication programmes and tougher drug suppression methods in Thailand and China, heroin and methamphetamines continue to pour out of the Wa-controlled high country of northern Burma After a six-hour-long journey by taxi from Jinghong, the principal city of China's southern Yunnan province, we reached the border town of Mong Ah, where a bridge over the Namkam River separates it from Pangsang, the capital city of the Wa region in northern Burma. Along the road that cuts through mist-shrouded mountains dotted with hilltribe villages, we came across some luxury right-hand drive cars, including the expensive Mitsubishi Pajero and Honda SUV models, with number plates bearing the initials "NW", for North Wa. This is in sharp contrast to a small army of motorcycles, motorised rickshaws, and noisy tractors and trucks that were conspicuous in all the towns we passed through. Local villagers must be wondering what kind of business the Pajero drivers do to possess such expensive vehicles. [continues 1606 words]
BEIJING -- With China taking its first real steps toward a full-scale public awareness campaign about AIDS this week, the degree of ignorance caused by past government denial is evident in the dazed expression of Zhao Pingyuan. Pedaling his bicycle along a narrow alleyway in the graceful old Houhai neighborhood, Mr. Zhao, 33, stopped beside a new government AIDS poster. He had not noticed the poster, or AIDS, before. "I've never heard of it," he said. "I'm from Henan Province. We don't have it in Henan." Told that Henan is an epicenter of AIDS, with huge numbers of cases and deaths, Mr. Zhao shook his head. "There is nothing like that," he said. "It would have been on television if people had died of AIDS." This week, in a flurry of publicity coinciding with World AIDS Day, AIDS is finally all over television in China. New public service announcements promote awareness and even recommend condom use. [continues 632 words]
The government has been urged to develop "maintenance treatment" medications for drug addicts, who are responsible for 40 per cent of street robberies in Guangzhou, reports New Express News. Many countries and regions use medications such as methadone, LAAM and naltrexone to treat opiate addiction. Though the medications have been criticized as "heroin substitutes" that only alleviate the symptoms of drug addiction, Guangzhou should consider similar treatment programmes if only for the purpose of improving social order, said Zheng Guoqiang, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Municipal People's Congress. [continues 74 words]
Women's anti-drug task forces have been active in Yingjiang County since 2002, during which time 1,449 of the county's 4,254 registered addicts have attended rehabilitation sessions organized by the groups. To date, 536 abusers have completely kicked the habit. Nonetheless, the whole province of Yunnan, which shares a 2,184-kilometre border with Myanmar, is constantly confronted with the spread of narcotics. In 2001, provincial law enforcement authorities confiscated 8,731 kilograms of drugs, more than 70 per cent of all drugs seized in China that year. [continues 316 words]
No one was sure whether the plan would work. But the 37 women from Southwest China's Yunnan Province, whose husbands had all succumbed to the lure of drugs, were determined. They had nothing to lose, and they wanted to turn the tables. Erkun Village sits on a hillside about 70 kilometres from the China-Myanmar border in western Yunnan's Yingjiang County. All 298 of its residents occupying 63 households are of the Jinpo ethnic minority, known as Kachin in Myanmar. They enjoyed relatively peaceful, happy lives up until the 1980s, when the drug trade active in the adjacent notorious Golden Triangle made its way across the border as China opened up. [continues 1508 words]
BEIJING - Twenty-six convicted criminals were collectively sentenced to death in China's southern city of Guangzhou as part of a government effort to clear a back-log of cases awaiting verdict, state press reported on Sunday. The 26 criminals were mostly convicted of "drug trafficking and other heinous crimes", and were sentenced to death on Saturday, the China News Service reported. The collective death sentence was delivered under heavy security at the Guangzhou municipal court with some 150 armed police and security guards maintaining order, the report said. [continues 212 words]
At the Beijing Drug Abuse Control Centre, 21-year-old Xiao Lan from Liaoning Province fidgets as painful memories of her past revisit her time and again, always leaving her with the single realization: It all began with ignorance. She remembers a winter afternoon in 1986 in her home town of Benxi City when a kindergarten classmate asked her on the playground, "Would you dare to put your tongue against the metal rail on the slide?" Without hesitation, Xiao Lan, then four, stuck out her tongue and did as she was challenged. When she tried to move away after a few seconds, she felt a sharp pain. In the bitterly cold air, her tongue had frozen firmly to the rail. [continues 1268 words]
Narcotics control police in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province teamed up with Russian authorities to crack down on a cross-border drug-trafficking ring and arrested two Russian suspects. On April 28, local police in the city of Suifenhe seized two Russian suspects who were processing marijuana, and authorities in turn confiscated 1.6 kilograms of drugs, 20 kilograms of marijuana leaves and some processing equipment at the site, said Cui Cunde, head of the Heilongjiang Public Security Department's anti-drug brigade. [continues 206 words]
Shanghai's Anti-drug Committee has announced that the number of drug users in the city greatly increased over the past few years, to reach 15,643 last year, some 3,767 more than in 2001. According to Labour Daily, officials said that although most drug users were jobless, more young white-collar workers were also falling victim to drug abuse. In 1999, 33 of the drug users at the Shanghai Mandatory Rehabilitation Institute had attended college, accounting for just 0.5 per cent of the addicts residing there. However, the number rose to 65 in 2002. [end]
FIRST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FOR KIDS OF DRUG ADDICTS IN SINO-MYANMAR BORDER An elementary school for the kids of drug addicts has been set up on the Sino-Myanmar border belt, a major drug trafficking center. Myanmar-China Campus School Against Drugs with an area of 1,000 square meters, is located at the No. 4 Special Zone in the east of Shan State, Myanmar. The school contains 173-sq-m classrooms equipped with 40 sets of desks as well as a seven-cubic-meter tank used to store clean drinking water. [continues 83 words]
SHANGHAI: Local researchers of traditional Chinese medicines are exploring more effective and cheaper methods to rehabilitate drug addicts. "The effects of acupuncture and Chinese medicines have been confirmed to control withdrawal symptoms from opium-like drugs to varying degrees," said professor Hu Jun at Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacology, yesterday. Acupuncture detoxification is based on the theory that the body's natural opioid is retained by drugs, causing addicts have to seek more opioid from narcotics. Through acupuncture on certain acupoints, the body is stimulated to release more opioid which in turn control the pains and help addicts kick drug habits. [continues 289 words]
Six people were executed on Wednesday for their drug related crimes, the No 2 Intermediate People's Court of Beijing announced yesterday. The intermediate court held a press conference to say that the executions were carried out on the order of the Supreme People's Court of China. Zheng Fuxing was the only one among the six executed who was not a trafficker but a maker of drugs. Zheng was the chief druggist of a pharmaceutical factory in Fujian Province, East China, and he used his expertise to produce narcotic pills in the factory. [continues 356 words]
"Never even think of trying it just once, otherwise you will be trapped forever by its evil influence," said a 30-year-old drug addict surnamed Liu, when recalling his nightmare-like experience of taking heroin at a drug-rehabilitation centre in Beijing. Liu made his decision to break the habit after living in a drug hell for several years, during which his heartbroken father was killed in a traffic accident. Like Liu, the health of tens of thousands of drug addicts has been destroyed due to the spread of drugs in recent years. What is worse is that drug addiction also breeds crime, said drug control experts. [continues 300 words]
Chinese students aged 10 to 16 are being offered advice on how to stay away from drugs as the nation steps up its battle to curb the growth in the number of addicts. They will be taught about the harmful side effects of drugs and how they impact on a person's health, their family and society. The compulsory course, which started in spring, is tailored to the age group that is most at risk. Of the 1 million drug users registered by the public security authorities in China at the end of 2002, 74 per cent were juveniles, according to latest official data. The proportion is expected to swell further by the end of this year, experts say. [continues 186 words]
Lin Zexu is a name known by all Chinese people. On June 3, 1839, he ordered the destruction of about 1,000 tons of smuggled opium confiscated from foreign dealers, at Humen in south China's Guangdong Province. Lin's heroic deed more than 160 years ago astounded the whole world. Today, China has extended greater efforts and taken tougher measures to deal with drug smuggling, the illegal drug trade and drug use. Drug enforcement agents in China uncovered over 110,000 cases of illegal activities and captured nearly 90,000 people suspected of criminal involvement with drugs last year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Public Security. [continues 417 words]
DRUG addiction in Shanghai has maintained a rapid growth rate, with the number of young drug-takers growing the fastest. The city has reported about 2,800 drug addicts while experts say the correct figure is six to 10 times higger. "Young people between 18 and 25 make up 36.4 per cent and those under 18 accounted for 2.8 per cent," said Huang Shunmei, from Shanghai Mandatory Drug Rehabilitation Institute. Due to limited government resources and high medical costs, outside help is now entering the drug rehabilitation arena. [continues 73 words]
Drug control agencies and all levels of government are being urged to join forces in the war against narcotics dealers and drug-related crimes on the eve of International Anti-Drug Day. In a stark warning to those who profit from a trade that blights and destroys lives, three leading traffickers were Wednesday executed in South China. The same day, and also in Guangdong Province, judges sentenced 18 other defendants convicted of drug dealing to either the death penalty or life imprisonment. [continues 416 words]
Today marks the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, with this year's theme being "Let's talk about drugs." According to the United Nations, the theme stresses the need for children, families, colleagues, teachers and communities to talk about drug abuse, admit that it is a problem and take responsibility for doing something about it. Talking about drugs can break the silence and stigma that surround people who are drug-dependent. It can make people aware of the seriousness of the problem and help in our fight against drug abuse. [continues 380 words]
SHANGHAI: The first four drug addicts stepped into the city's only privately run drug rehabilitation hospital, the Shanghai Huashi Drug Recovery Hospital, yesterday afternoon. The step is the first of many to try and shake their addiction and a stride forward for the local social groups trying to rehabilitate them and other users. Huashi Hospital, jointly backed by Shanghai Yishida Investment Ltd and the Shanghai Huashan Health Development Co, is able to cater for about 80 patients at the moment and it has the goal of becoming China's leading non-government drug recovery centre. [continues 273 words]
A Chinese police officer named a national hero for relentless campaigns against drug trafficking gangs faces prosecution for smuggling heroin, says the official Xinhua news agency. Zhou Kun had captured more than 1000 drug smugglers, but in November police caught two members of a trafficking ring who said they were working for Zhou. Xinhua says he has confessed to smuggling narcotics on repeated occasions. [end]
Distrust Had Hampered Previous Efforts BEIJING, May 26 -- Kin-cheung Wong had a good thing going. His four-story gambling den and brothel was a money-spinner, according to the case assembled by government investigators. And a joint Chinese-U.S. task force alleged that his narcotics operation had moved $100 million worth of heroin from China to the East Coast of the United States in just three years. Then on May 16, Chinese police nabbed Wong with 77 pounds of heroin in a sting operation, the first time they could document his dealing the drug on Chinese soil, officials said. Across the globe, drug agents in the United States, Canada and India made nearly simultaneous arrests of 30 other suspects, dismantling a complete heroin trafficking network, detaining suppliers, traffickers and distributors, authorities reported. [continues 1382 words]
More than 4,200 kilograms of drugs were seized last year by customs officers in South China's Guangdong Province, thanks to a heightened anti-smuggling campaign. The quantity was 20 times more than the amount recovered the year earlier, said customs officer Chen Lin. Guangdong, one of China's most economically advanced regions, is a major trading gateway for the nation. Chen said yesterday 71 suspects were detained last year in relation to drug smuggling offenses. Guangdong Customs launched in May a special campaign to focus on fighting the smuggling of drugs. [continues 287 words]
Banished by the Communists, opium is back with a vengeance -- as heroin. Now ordinary citizens are uniting to fight it. ERGU, China -- One boy's sister was crushed by a train after she pumped heroin into her veins and passed out on the tracks. A young man became an addict in the city; his parents carried his body home to this village in a box. The father of two girls overdosed, and their mother is hooked. Heroin-related tragedies are as common as the dried twigs that locals scavenge and burn to stay warm in this hardscrabble ethnic enclave in Sichuan province, along China's new drug trail. Though remote by distance and developmental standards from the country's booming coastal cities, Ergu and its 2,700 people are on the cutting edge of an emerging national health crisis. [continues 1823 words]
GUANGZHOU, China - They consider themselves a family, though they are not related by blood. Like any family, all they want is a place to call home. But for the last four months they have been forced to flee from house to apartment, from neighborhood to neighborhood, evicted from every temporary residence they have managed to rent. The problem is that all seven members of the group are infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and so no landlord in China's most cosmopolitan city (sometimes called Canton) is willing to take their money, no neighborhood willing to welcome them. [continues 1324 words]
BEIJING - Six members of a gang that smuggled more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of heroin into China have been sentenced to death in Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday. The sentences were handed down Sunday in Dongguan, an industrial center near Hong Kong that is emerging as a base for cross-border drug crime involving the former British territory. The defendants shipped heroin from Myanmar, on China's southwest border, through southern China to Guangdong, Xinhua said. [continues 106 words]
Pocket-Sized Pugilists Bring Small Fortunes BEIJING - If you want a champion cricket, there's just one thing to know: "The most important thing, to put it simply: You have to find it a wife," said Li Liangqi, 61, a retiree who says his stable has never lost a cricket fight. "Just like a man, a cricket needs to build up his strength." But a mate is not all that's needed to ensure victory. Because a female cricket, for all her talents, can't clean the house, and that's where the master comes in. [continues 687 words]
Agents, International Collaboration Get Results Kunming, China --- In class, the students pass around hollow pineapples used to smuggle drugs, and practice their frisking techniques on a blond-wigged mannequin. This is China's next generation of anti-drug agents, training at a campus in Yunnan province in the mountainous southwest. It can seem at times almost lighthearted, but they face a daunting task. China is awash in heroin and methamphetamine, much of it coming over the country's southern border. Reeling from the influx, China has gone from hiding the problem to making it highly public. Last year, drug enforcers adopted new high-tech communications, surveillance and detection techniques. Perhaps most important, they have stepped up cooperation with China's Southeast Asian neighbors. [continues 340 words]
U.N. HEALTH REPORT SAYS CHINA ON VERGE OF AIDS CATASTROPHe BEIJING -- A United Nations report delivered scathing words about China's massive AIDS epidemic, stating that the country's efforts to stem the disease have had an "infinitesimally small impact." Titled "HIV/AIDS: China's Titanic Peril," the 89-page report released Thursday portrays a government that has acknowledged the disease's spread but failed to contain or treat it on a large scale. Officials at some of the eight U.N. agencies that jointly issued the report stressed it wasn't an attack on the government, and praised increasing efforts by officials and the state media to address the scourge of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. But, it is clearly a warning to a government that appears immobilized by the disease, even as a wealth of statistics confirm its rapid spread. [continues 413 words]
SHANGHAI, China - China marked U.N. anti-drug day by executing 64 people accused of drug crimes, officials and state media said Wednesday. Many of the executions on Tuesday and Wednesday came immediately after public rallies where thousands watched judges condemn the accused. China usually marks International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on June 26 with a wave of publicized executions, underscoring authorities' belief that harsh punishments are an effective weapon against the spread of drugs. Officials from the United Nations have said they do not condone the practice. [continues 214 words]
SHANGHAI, China - China marked U.N. anti-drug day by executing 64 people accused of drug crimes, officials and state media said Wednesday. Many of the executions on Tuesday and Wednesday came immediately after public rallies where thousands watched judges condemn the accused. China usually marks International Anti-Drug Day on June 26 with a wave of publicized executions, underscoring authorities' belief that harsh punishments are an effective weapon against the spread of drugs. Officials from the United Nations have said they do not condone the practice. [continues 246 words]
SHANGHAI -- China marked International Day Against Drug Abuse by executing 64 people accused of drug crimes, officials and state media said Wednesday. Other nations staged anti-drug rallies and burned piles of confiscated narcotics. Many of the Chinese executions came immediately after public rallies at which thousands watched as judges condemned the accused and authorities burned piles of seized heroin, Ecstasy and other drugs. China usually marks the day with a wave of publicized executions, underscoring authorities' belief that harsh punishments are an effective weapon against drugs. United Nations officials have said they do not condone the practice. Meanwhile, in Myanmar, the military government torched a pile of seized drugs and insisted that it was committed to fighting narcotics, despite international accusations that the junta profits from the drug trade. At a ceremony in Yangon, the capital, authorities set ablaze more than 3 tons of opium, 530 pounds of heroin and nearly 35 million stimulant tablets. [continues 90 words]
At least 27 convicted drug criminals were executed in China to mark Wednesday's international anti-drug day, while scores of others were sentenced to death or to prison terms, state press reports said. Fourteen people were sentenced to death in China's southwestern Sichuan province on Tuesday, with nine of them immediately taken to the execution grounds and shot, the China News Service reported. The sentencing took place at a rally at the Shuangliu county sports ground in the provincial capital of Chengdu, where local authorities also incinerated 40 kilograms of drugs, it said. [continues 162 words]
BEIJING - China said Monday that Southeast Asia faced a grim battle with increasingly organized drug rings in the notorious heroin hotbed known as the Golden Triangle and called for tougher joint efforts to stem the tide. The region's drug battle also must focus equal attention on amphetamine types like "ice" and "ecstasy," increasingly mixed in clandestine Chinese laboratories, senior drug official Wang Gang told counterparts from five Southeast Asian neighbors and the United Nations (news - web sites) at the start of a three-day meeting. [continues 502 words]
Successful, Young, Professional - The Profile Hardly Fits Drug Abusers - But It Applies To More And More Of Them In China's Night Spots BEIJING -- High-income Chinese professionals are cashing in on new leisure drugs and as a result they have become the focus of an anti-drug campaign. Since February, police have infiltrated more than 21,000 discos, bars and karaoke lounges and made spot checks to flush out young drug users. Up to 882 night spots have been warned or closed down, according to Chinese public security authorities. [continues 355 words]
BEIJING -- A Beijing restaurant-owner was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sprinkling ground opium poppy over a spicy fish dish in an effort to ensure that diners returned, a newspaper reported. Beijing's Haidian District People's Court on April 23 convicted Bi Jingxiang of "tricking others into using drugs" and also ordered him to pay a $365 fine, the Workers Daily said in its Saturday edition. Bi claimed ground opium poppy was frequently used in his hometown of Chongqing to prevent dysentery among those partaking of the region's spicy cuisine. [continues 111 words]
HIGH in the hills of a remote part of southern China, the villagers claim to have discovered the secret of long life: rice wine, drunk more or less all day long; snake wine; and a soup made from the oily seeds of the cannabis plant. Bama county is so cut off by the hills that surround it that the motor car has yet to penetrate. It has a population of just over 300,000, yet it has 73 centenarians, one of the highest ratios in the world. [continues 613 words]
SEATTLE -- By genetically fingerprinting the AIDS and hepatitis C viruses, researchers from China and New York have shown that the world's most-populous nation is suffering from distinct epidemics of these blood-borne microbes. Separately, another team of researchers showed just how fast HIV mutates, finding that it evolves far more swiftly than the influenza virus. The Yunnan province in the southwest region of China abuts the Golden Triangle, a major source of heroin . Here, the HIV and hepatitis C epidemics are driven by injection drug users, who share infected needles. In this region, a strain of HIV, called subtype C, extends north from Yunnan along the old Silk Road, which is now used by drug couriers. Similarly, the hepatitis C virus, called HCV, is dominated in this same region by a strain called subtype 3. [continues 370 words]
Increasing drug use in Asia is accelerating the spread of HIV-AIDS along drug trafficking routes from the so-called Golden Triangle to nations like Indonesia and governments are doing too little to combat it, a report says. The report on 22 Asian countries said Asian governments were working against the sexual transmission of HIV but they were not doing enough to prevent the virus spreading among injecting drug users. "Without such action, Asia will continue to be home to what threatens to be amongst the worst regional AIDS epidemics on Earth," said the report by The Centre For Harm Reduction, one of Asia's foremost health and medical research bodies. [continues 336 words]
BEIJING -- Twelve people from Hong Kong have been detained after China's biggest heroin seizure on record, police said Tuesday, highlighting the growing role of Hong Kong traffickers in the Chinese drug trade. The Hong Kong suspects were among 21 picked up after police seized nearly 1,500 pounds of heroin in November in the southwestern province of Yunnan, said Sun Dahong, deputy director of the provincial police. The heroin was found in a joint raid by Chinese and Myanmar police, the biggest seizure since a deal for cooperation against drug trafficking was signed in August by China and Laos, Thailand and Myanmar -- the three countries that make up the heroin-producing "Golden Triangle." [continues 401 words]
MANILA, Philippines -- Zeng Jiaxuan sold fish balls in the shadow of Spanish mission churches when he first arrived here from his native China. Yet within a year he was hawking something far more lucrative - -- methamphetamines -- and was on his way to becoming one of the biggest drug barons in his adoptive country. His rise, and eventual disappearance, provides a window onto what is being described as the Opium Wars in reverse. Instead of 19th-century British trading houses pushing opium on the Chinese, China's massive production might is shoveling an addictive stimulant known as "ice" into markets from Seoul to Sydney, throwing police forces and governments off balance. [continues 927 words]
Inside China
