China executes drug traffickers on U.N. anti-drug day

BEIJING - China marked U.N. anti-drug day Monday 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.''

China also executed at least 38 drug traffickers last week.

In its first policy paper on China's drug problems, the government said Monday that the number of registered drug addicts jumped from 148,000 in 1991 to 681,000 last year. Heroin was the drug of choice for 71 percent of addicts, and 79 percent were under age 35, according to the document issued by the State Council, China's Cabinet.

More recent figures have put the number of registered addicts as high as 800,000, and a senior U.S. drug control official has quoted Chinese estimates of 3 million to 12 million total drug users, out of China's estimated 1.25 billion people.

''The drug scourge is becoming more serious with each passing day and the situation is grim for the anti-drug struggle,'' the policy paper acknowledged.

Law enforcers ''are waging a fierce battle against all drug-related criminal activities, administering merciless punishment to those involved.''

Between 1991 and 1999, China cracked more than 800,000 drug cases, confiscating almost 40 tons of heroin, 17 tons of opium, 15 tons of marijuana, and 23 tons of methamphetamine, the paper said. It added that the 22 tons of drugs seized in 1999 marked a 33 percent rise over the previous year.

After wiping out widespread opium addiction in the first years of communist rule, the government was slow to react to a resurgence in drug use following economic reforms in the 1980s. Only in the past few years has the government started public awareness campaigns and appealed for international cooperation.

On Monday, authorities in the southern provinces of Fujian and Guangdong burned 2 tons of seized drugs, Xinhua said. In Beijing, authorities distributed 500,000 anti-drug brochures.

State-run television broadcast a report about young disco-goers using the drug Ecstasy, known in China as the ''head-rocking pill.'' Stylishly dressed women were shown shaking their heads violently to techno music.

The policy paper said China treats addicts within its system of 746 compulsory rehabilitation centers and 168 treatment and labor camps - facilities for hard-core users.

Private treatment centers are also being set up. One model community outreach program for recovering addicts in Inner Mongolia has brought the relapse rate down to 30 percent, the policy paper said.

Overall, relapse rates remain high, partly a factor of the poor employment prospects many former addicts face at a time of rapid economic reforms.

China lies on a major transit route for the 110 tons of heroin produced in neighboring Myanmar every year. The policy paper blamed drugs smuggled from the ''Golden Triangle'' border region for the surge in addiction.

It said China has virtually eradicated cultivation of plants such as opium poppies within its territory and aids Myanmar and Laos with crop-substitution and tourism-promotion programs to discourage poppy growing.