Does China Have a Drug Problem?
China doesn't seem like a place that has much of a drug problem.  Drug use is not a visible problem in China and when I have had conversations with Shanghainese people about drugs, it seems as though they have never seen drugs, much less used them.  But according to a government official Tuesday, in China there exists the same dark underworld of drugs that one would find in any other country where there is youth, addiction and the resulting market for drugs.  And the Chinese government has been waging a war on drugs similar to that which you would find in America.  Minus those stupid public service announcements.

According to a Xinhua report, the Chinese police have been vigilant in the past year in the detection and confiscation of illegal drugs within and on their way into China.  The deputy director of the anti-narcotic bureau of China's Ministry of Public Security announced Tuesday that in 2006, police seized 4.79 tons of heroin, 1.52 tons of opium, 4.9 tons of crystal meth (which the Chinese still call "ice"), 329,000 ecstasy pills, 1.5 tons of ketamine and 267.5 tons of chemicals used to make drugs.  That's a lot of drugs.  The Ministry's report made no mention of marijuana.

When considering the amount of drugs confiscated and accounting for the amount that goes untouched, the great mystery is where these drugs are going and who it is that is taking them.  Offhand, I would say it's the foreigners.  But really, the expat community in China simply isn't large enough to consume this amount of drugs.  No matter how strung out some foreigners here appear to be.  And looking at the numbers, only 24 of over 4,000 drug arrests in Beijing this year involved foreigners.  This means there's a great many Chinese that like to get high.

China News Digest, a Mandarin site, estimates there are over 4 million Chinese drug addicts in China, just under 0.3% of China's total population.  A pretty small percentage.  Heroin is the drug most commonly targeted by both the media and police, as intravenous drug use has always been blamed for the spread of AIDS in China.  The most popular destinations for international drug trafficking are Guangdong province, on the south border, and Yunnan province, which borders Southeast Asia, the area that was once known as the "Golden Triangle," Asia's major opium region.  Myanmar is the most prevalent origin for international drug trafficking into China.

According to a People's Daily article Tuesday, China has invested nearly USD$14 million this year into stepping up drug detection at the borders.  And on Tuesday the government boasted that in 2006, police had made 45,000 drug arrests.  While this sounds like a lot, the U.S. Bureau of Justice reported that from 1995-2005, U.S. cops made over 1.5 million drug arrests per year.  Like violent crime and obesity, drug use is somewhat of an overblown issue in China.  While drug trafficking and abuse are both problems worthy of prevention and defense, Chinese need only look at the the States to truly put these issues into perspective.