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Drug Problems Increase (Excerpts - From News) Chinese officials say they believe meth has now overtaken heroin as the most widely used addictive drug in China, and that it poses a greater threat: Meth is easily made, its users seem unaware of the dangers it poses, and there is no equivalent of methadone, a substitute drug that China has used widely to combat heroin addiction. “Five years ago or so, ATS were mostly used by rich people,” says Lu Lin, a drug abuse expert who now runs Peking University’s No. 6 Hospital, which specializes in mental health. “Now it’s mainly poorer people who are taking them.” China’s drug problem dates back more than 150 years to the days when the British began forcibly importing huge amounts of opium from India. By the end of the 19th century, historians have estimated that 1 in 5 Chinese men was an opium addict. But as China opened to the world in the 1980s, a boom in foreign trade, a steady rise in incomes, and the introduction of Western habits brought drugs back into China. Until recently the drug of choice was heroin, smuggled into the country from the so-called Golden Triangle where Myanmar (Burma) borders Thailand and Laos or, more recently, from Afghanistan, the world’s biggest opium exporter. Last year, though, for the first time since the Chinese authorities began keeping records, the number of registered users of ATS – mostly methamphetamine – outstripped the number of those using opiates such as heroin. “China is facing a grim task in curbing synthetic drugs including ice, which more and more Chinese drug addicts tend to use,” Mr. Liu warned. “Ice today is like heroin in the ’90s,” she adds. “People say it gives them energy, makes them feel good, and they don’t think it’s addictive.” Not long ago, meth was the rich ’ party drug in China. Today, according to the little research that has been done, it is also popular among truckers, migrant workers, and other laborers who value the energy burst they get from amphetamines, both for work and pleasure. And away from the bright lights of China’s megacities, meth is spreading into small towns and villages. |
