Despite a Crackdown, Use of Illegal Drugs in China Continues Unabated
By DAN LEVIN
JAN. 24, 2015
BEIJING — Despite the crowds and the risk of arrest, the African man standing outside an Adidas outlet here one recent wintry evening was brazen in his pitch.
“Hey man, you want to smoke something?” he asked a passer-by, before offering his wares: cocaine, ecstasy and crystal methamphetamine, all highly illegal in China.
The man was but one of several drug dealers who are a fixture in Sanlitun, one of Beijing’s diplomatic districts, just down the block from a police station. Their presence would seem to defy the Chinese government’s ambitious claims of a six-month crackdown on drugs that is underway in 108 cities.
Last week, the Ministry of Public Security announced that the Chinese police had arrested 60,500 suspects on drug offenses and seized more than 11 metric tons of narcotics since the latest operation, called “Ban drugs in hundreds of cities,” began in October, according to the Xinhua state news agency. Around 180,000 drug users had been punished by mid-December, including more than 55,000 sent to government-run rehabilitation centers, Xinhua said.
But for all the reported successes of China’s expanding antidrug campaigns — which last year included the arrest of celebrities like the son of the movie star Jackie Chan and the burning of 400 tons of methamphetamine ingredients — some analysts question whether the police are winning significant, lasting victories in what the authorities have called a “people’s war.”
China’s growing prosperity has turned recreational drug use into an $82 billion annual domestic business, according to the National Narcotics Control Commission. There are 2.76 million drug users registered with the Chinese government, three-quarters of them under 35. Yet even the police admit that such figures convey only a fraction of the drug problem. In October, Liu Yuejin, director general of the government’s anti-narcotics division, estimated the actual number of addicts at roughly 13 million, half of whom are suspected of using methamphetamine, up from nine percent of addicts who were suspected of using that drug in 2008.
“China is facing a grim task in curbing synthetic drugs, including ‘ice,’ which more and more of China’s drug addicts tend to use,” he said, using the street name for crystal methamphetamine, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. China has some of the world’s harshest drug laws: those caught trafficking large amounts of drugs can face the death penalty, and the police have the authority to send casual drug users to compulsory drug rehabilitation centers, which human rights groups say are little more than labor camps.
Continued here http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/w...l-drugs-in-china-continues-unabated.html?_r=0
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Wow a "drug war" thats having no positive effect and full of the oppression, exploitation and abuse of drug users and addicts. Same as it ever was.. Just another chapter in the never ending war on people.
By DAN LEVIN
JAN. 24, 2015
BEIJING — Despite the crowds and the risk of arrest, the African man standing outside an Adidas outlet here one recent wintry evening was brazen in his pitch.
“Hey man, you want to smoke something?” he asked a passer-by, before offering his wares: cocaine, ecstasy and crystal methamphetamine, all highly illegal in China.
The man was but one of several drug dealers who are a fixture in Sanlitun, one of Beijing’s diplomatic districts, just down the block from a police station. Their presence would seem to defy the Chinese government’s ambitious claims of a six-month crackdown on drugs that is underway in 108 cities.
Last week, the Ministry of Public Security announced that the Chinese police had arrested 60,500 suspects on drug offenses and seized more than 11 metric tons of narcotics since the latest operation, called “Ban drugs in hundreds of cities,” began in October, according to the Xinhua state news agency. Around 180,000 drug users had been punished by mid-December, including more than 55,000 sent to government-run rehabilitation centers, Xinhua said.
But for all the reported successes of China’s expanding antidrug campaigns — which last year included the arrest of celebrities like the son of the movie star Jackie Chan and the burning of 400 tons of methamphetamine ingredients — some analysts question whether the police are winning significant, lasting victories in what the authorities have called a “people’s war.”
China’s growing prosperity has turned recreational drug use into an $82 billion annual domestic business, according to the National Narcotics Control Commission. There are 2.76 million drug users registered with the Chinese government, three-quarters of them under 35. Yet even the police admit that such figures convey only a fraction of the drug problem. In October, Liu Yuejin, director general of the government’s anti-narcotics division, estimated the actual number of addicts at roughly 13 million, half of whom are suspected of using methamphetamine, up from nine percent of addicts who were suspected of using that drug in 2008.
“China is facing a grim task in curbing synthetic drugs, including ‘ice,’ which more and more of China’s drug addicts tend to use,” he said, using the street name for crystal methamphetamine, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. China has some of the world’s harshest drug laws: those caught trafficking large amounts of drugs can face the death penalty, and the police have the authority to send casual drug users to compulsory drug rehabilitation centers, which human rights groups say are little more than labor camps.
Continued here http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/w...l-drugs-in-china-continues-unabated.html?_r=0
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Wow a "drug war" thats having no positive effect and full of the oppression, exploitation and abuse of drug users and addicts. Same as it ever was.. Just another chapter in the never ending war on people.
