Bai Jingfu, deputy director of the National Narcotics Control Commission (NNCC) and deputy minister of public security, made a sober analysis to a plenum of the NNCC, saying he was not very optimistic about either the international or domestic situation.

Bai said the scale of planting and smuggling narcotics in the infamous "Golden Triangle" had not lessened yet and drug dealers in northern Myanmar had recently surfaced to smuggle narcotics into China.

In China, there was a trend for dealers of the amphetamine ecstasy, known as "head-shaking pill" in China, to shift their focus from coastal areas to inland provinces, and dealers in chemicals used to make narcotics had become very cunning, he said.

Statistics show that in the first three months, the number of "ice"-related cases each with seized "ice" surpassing 10,000 grams had doubled year-on-year and there had been a sharp rise in chemicals used to make drugs seized by the police.

Starting from February this year, a nationwide anti-drugs campaign has targeted mainly dance halls, nightclubs and other entertainment places where drug users and dealers gather.

Against this backdrop, the "head-shaking pill" dealers and addicts had gone underground and drug addiction had become an increasingly significant factor leading to a range of crimes, Bai said.

So far, drugs problems had been identified in 2,051 counties and regions. There are now 205 counties each with more than 1,000 people involved in drug-related activities. By October last year, China's public security authorities had registered 901,000 drug addicts countrywide.

Bai urged drug-control departments at all levels to work harder in the fight against narcotics.

( June 21, 2002)