BEIJING - China marked a United Nations anti-drug day Tuesday by executing at least 59 people, burning narcotics and staging mass rallies nationwide.

"Drug abuse, drug trafficking are indeed very terrible problems of our day," U.N. deputy spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said at U.N. headquarters in New York. "It affects the whole world, it spares no country, rich or poor."

He said a 1998 U.N. convention provides the legal framework for the fight against drug trafficking but "as far as I am aware the convention does not provide for the application of the death penalty."

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SHANGHAI -- The presidents of China, Russia and four Central Asian states begin two days of talks Thursday on regional security issues such as Islamic militancy, drug smuggling and organised crime.

Regional powerbrokers China and Russia were also expected to rally opposition to US President George W. Bush's plans to build a missile defence shield during the discussions in the eastern Chinese city of Shanghai.

Security was tight for the meeting of the "Shanghai Five" forum -- which also comprises Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- with heavy police deployment around the meeting venues across the city.

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Police Are Struggling To Control Ecstasy, The Fast-Spreading Club Drug

Beijing -- The rave was at fever pitch at Beijing's swank Club Vogue. The dance floor was packed with a sweaty mix of foreign and local hipsters tuned in to the techno beats.

Some were wagging their heads back and forth like human metronomes -- a sign that they had probably taken the drug Ecstasy. Known in the mainland as "head-shaking drug," or yaotou wan, Ecstasy has soared in popularity as the party drug of choice since it first filtered in from Hong Kong three years ago through habitues of the rave lifestyle.

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Golden Triangle Drugs Increasingly Pour Through China

China is claiming a major victory in its war against armed heroin gangs operating inside Burma's Golden Triangle.

State media has announced that one of the kingpins of the heroin trade - a Chinese-born drug boss Tan Xiaolin - has been captured and handed over to China by Burmese authorities.

They have also arrested 18 members of Tan's armed gang and seized three tonnes of heroin.

State-run media is calling this the biggest coup against the Golden Triangle drug gangs in nearly half a century.

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BANGKOK: China has agreed to cooperate with Thailand and Myanmar to combat the flow of illegal drugs in the region, the foreign ministry here announced on Saturday.

"The Chinese foreign minister has agreed in principle on a tripartite cooperation with Thailand and Myanmar for drugs suppression," a ministry statement said.

The announcement coincides with a four-day official visit by Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai to China that started Thursday and which has included meetings with President Jiang Zemin and his counterpart Tang Jiaxuan.

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Customs officers in Hong Kong and southern China are setting up a special task force to tackle a major surge in drug smuggling into the former British colony.

There's been a dramatic rise in the number of seizures of drugs like ecstasy, produced in increasing quantities in mainland China.

Police in Hong Kong say the illegal trade is increasing because of the ease with which people can cross the border and the fact that drugs command high prices in Hong Kong.

The BBC correspondent in Hong Kong says huge markets for these substances are being found among young and newly-affluent consumers in the region.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

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CHINA: China has declared war on drug-dealers after new figures revealed a dramatic rise of 26 per cent in the number of drug addicts in the country last year.

The figures, released on Saturday by the National Narcotics Control Commission (NNCC), indicate there are 860,000 drug addicts in the country. The increase is blamed on easier access to heroin and "ice", a deadly mix of cocaine and amphetamines.

Mr Bai Jingfu, deputy director of the NNCC, said there were seizures of 20 tonnes of "ice" across China last year compared to the 16 tonnes seized in 1999. Police confiscated just 7.3 tonnes in the period from 1991 to 1998.

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CHINA is executing drug dealers every week and locking up users, some of them under 18, in mental hospitals. The harsh regime is designed to contain a drugs epidemic seen as a threat to social stability. China traditionally has been plagued by opium, although the Communist Party temporarily eradicated drug use. Now synthetic drugs from the former Soviet Union are replacing opium derivatives such as heroin. Official figures show that the use of drugs, including Ecstasy and amphetamines, is up by more than 25 per cent on last year. The official number of addicts is

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China has a rapidly growing drug problem, with a 25 per cent increase in the number of drug addicts and rising seizures of illicit drugs.

Figures released by the National Narcotics Control Commission at a conference in Beijing show there were 860,000 registered drug addicts in China by the end of last year. An official white paper on narcotic abuse issued by the central government last June put the figure at 681,000.

The official figures suggest a six-fold increase in drug addicts over the past decade.

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LIKE in Malaysia, the authorities in Hong Kong are getting worried over a trend by partygoers and young people to experiment with mind-bending substances and so-called designer drugs.

Amid reports of some notable figures caught popping various types of psychotropic pills at rave parties and other occasions, anti-narcotics authorities have decided to get the community involved in the fight against drug abuse and go where the action is.

Among the highlighted cases is the trial of the 33-year-old son of a tycoon said to have possessed cocaine, Viagra and other drugs at a rave party. Hearing has been adjourned to January next year.

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BEIJING - A kilogram of heroin sealed Ding Aguo's doom.

On June 22, the 31-year-old woman was executed by firing squad here along with six other people convicted of drug trafficking. The next day, 11 drug dealers in the city of Chengdu were rounded up, paraded before a stadium of spectators, then led away to be shot.

Within a single week, authorities put to death at least 48 people as part of an aggressive national anti-drug campaign. More than a dozen others were executed for committing violent crimes.

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A medicine used as a painkiller has a near total success rate in helping heroin addicts quit and could become a replacement for methadone, researchers have reported.

Dr Dominic Lee Tak-shing, an associate professor at the Chinese University's department of psychiatry, co-ordinated the study, which found that buprenorphine worked on 109 out of 110 addicts. The trial involved patients at the new Caritas Wong Yiu Nam Drug Abusers' Rehabilitation Centre, which opened in April.

The success rate of methadone treatment in Hong Kong is about 70 per cent, but the figures do not take into account those who relapse over a period of time after treatment.

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Considerable luck would still be needed for Hong Kong to be struck from an American global "hit list" of major illegal drug trafficking and money laundering centres, a senior SAR official warned yesterday.

Commissioner for Narcotics Clarie Lo Ku Ka-lee said she had been given assurances from US officials that Hong Kong would be dealt with fairly and squarely but no guarantees that it would be pulled from the list.

"I am confident there is now a greater understanding of all our efforts in Washington and I think they are impressed at everything we are doing," Ms Lo said after a week-long trip to the US capital. "We are still going to need some luck I think . . . this is an issue we will have to keep working on."

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The Hong Kong government has granted around 500,000 HK dollars (US$64,100) to finance 19 district anti-drug preventive education and publicity projects under the Community Against Drugs Scheme (CADS) in the year 2000/ 2001, according to a government press release Monday.

Funded by the Action Committee Against Narcotics (ACAN) of Hong Kong, the objective of the CADS is to encourage non-profit-making organizations, such as voluntary bodies and schools, to launch preventive education and publicity projects to further the anti-drug cause.

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The mainland appealed on Tuesday for stronger global co-operation in fighting narcotics trafficking.

The appeal, made in speeches and papers at a conference of the Interpol international police organisation, marked the mainland's latest call for help in fighting drug abuse and underscored its frustration in fending off the peril.

''As anti-drug law enforcers, we soberly know that cultivation, production and consumption of drugs is ceaselessly spreading and developing around the world,'' Public Security Minister Jia Chunwang said opening the Interpol anti-heroin conference.

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A taskforce is to tighten controls on the tranquilliser ketamine amid growing abuse and fears it is being used in "date rapes".

Since last year when the first case of ketamine abuse was reported, there have been 21 reported cases. The authorities handled 40 cases involving possession of 2.08 kilos of the substance.

Originally used as animal tranquilliser, ketamine can result in hallucinations and lead users to cause unwitting injury to themselves.

Ketamine can cause people to lose control, and officials fear it may have been used in attacks on women. Seizures of ketamine by police early this year revealed the drug had gained popularity as a party drug.

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Hong Kong may be taken off the "hit list", compiled by the United States, of pariah territories perceived to be lax in prosecuting the international war on the drugs trade.

We've been given a clean bill of health. That's nice.

It is also a nice bit of effrontery on behalf of the country which is the world's leading consumer and importer of cocaine, heroin and other narcotics. If any nation deserves to be on an international list of censure for creating a demand for illegal drugs, it is the US.

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China's history is steeped in drug abuse. No other country - with the possible recent example of Colombia - has been more deeply affected by the trade in narcotics.

Perhaps that is why the modern Chinese attitude to drugs is especially harsh. Over the past week, almost 50 drug traffickers and dealers have been executed nationwide in China. A blaze of publicity has accompanied their dispatch with a bullet to the back of the head. The government, somewhat unnecessarily in this light, this week announced a "show no mercy" policy to traffickers and users.

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Admitting That Addiction And Trafficking Are Getting Worse, Beijing Publicises Executions Across The Country

China has executed 10 drug traffickers in a synchronised operation to dramatise its seriousness about fighting drug-related crime and to mark International Anti-Drug Day.

Domestic consumption of drugs is becoming "more serious with each passing day", according to an official white paper.

The official news agency yesterday circulated a picture taken on Monday from Quanzhou in Fujian province showing two of the offenders being marched out of a stadium packed with spectators, and off to the execution ground.

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BEIJING -- China marked U.N. anti-drug day yesterday by executing dealers, torching narcotics and publicly acknowledging the grim inroads drugs are making among Chinese, particularly the young.

Those executed included three drug traffickers from Taiwan, a Hong Kong resident, two Shanghai heroin dealers, four dealers in the northern province of Shaanxi, three farmers in China's drug-afflicted southwest and four manufacturers of methamphetamine, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

It carried conflicting accounts on the total number of people put to death but said the executions made "a clear and compelling statement."

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