Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Monday December 3, 2001
John Ruwitch

"I was curious," explained Li Qiang, who injected the drug from the start and was soon shooting up two or three times a day, spending about $97 a week to feed his habit.

Li quickly become one of a new breed of addicts in China: urban, middle class and prosperous. Once largely a problem among poor and unemployed peasants on China's southern borders, drugs are spreading to cities all over the country.

Drug abuse, said Wayne Bazant, an official with the United Nations International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) "has almost moved into every province in China over the last five years."

"They're young, they're mostly male, they're using heroin, they're injecting it," he said, describing the profile of China's new addicts. Along with heroin, synthetic drugs like methamphetamines and ecstasy also have made advances as incomes rise on the back of sweeping economic reforms.

But the government is fighting back with facilities like the Beijing Compulsory Drug Rehabilitation Center, where Li has been living and undergoing therapy with some 600 other patients since he was busted about two months ago trying to buy a fix.

China says close to 900,000 drug addicts are registered with its public security organs, up from 148,000 in 1991. But some say the true number of addicts in a country of 1.3 billion people may be as high as seven million.

"Drug trafficking inland is becoming more and more professional, modern and clannish," said a report by the National Narcotics Commission of China.

FORCED TO QUIT

Since the Beijing center opened in 1995, it has helped some 7,000 people, center director Li Qiulin said.

A group of foreign journalists was taken on a tour of the walled facility this month in a sign the government is opening up about its drug problems. Li Qiang said he was confident the regimented lifestyle and therapy would change his ways.

"Right after I got here I felt exhausted and in pain," he said, dressed in blue and white striped hospital pajamas. "But after going through rehabilitation and study activities here I am pretty sure I won't go back to drugs."

Patients are roused at 6:40 a.m. for a full day of activities, including classes on the effects of drugs, therapy involving Western and Chinese traditional medicines and psychiatric sessions. At 10 p.m. the lights are out.

Those who can afford it, pay about $845 for three months of therapy, a center official said. Otherwise, the government foots the bill. Most patients at the 800-bed facility -- 80 percent of whom are men -- stay for three to six months.

Under the watchful eye of police they attend classes, play basketball, chess, badminton, and ping-pong. There is karaoke, and military-style marching around a courtyard.

DRUGS RISING

Statistics showed China seized 16.1 tons of amphetamine-type stimulants including "ice" in 1999, which accounted for about half of global seizures that year, the latest for which data was available.

But China appears most worried about heroin, derived from opium, which the Communist government fought hard to eradicate after their 1949 takeover. Like Li Qiang, more than 70 percent of China's known drug addicts are heroin users.

China borders Afghanistan and Myanmar, the world's biggest opium growers, and has surpassed Thailand as the biggest transit zone for heroin from Southeast Asia, according to the United Nations.

In the first nine months of 2001, China seized 17,640 pounds of heroin -- more than in all of 1998, and the most of any country for which the U.N. has statistics.

Compounding China's problems, about 70 percent of its AIDS web patients caught HIV shooting up with infected needles.

Yngve Danling, a law enforcement adviser with the UNDCP, applauded China's drug rehabilitation centers

"We believe they are doing the best out of their competence today," he said.

But the odds are overwhelmingly against Li kicking his habit. Relapse rates are as high as 80 percent.

For Li, temptation will be at hand as soon as he is freed. Asked if he would call the friend who introduced him to heroin, Li paused for a moment and skirted the question. "I'm confident in myself," he said.

(US$1 - 8.28 yuan)

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