China taking hits in designer drug war

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BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Asia is battling a booming synthetic tide of amphetamine-type drugs like "ice" and "ecstasy," with China coming under the spotlight for its place in making them.

Efforts to crack down on traditional drugs like heroin and cocaine are being hindered by the rampant rise in amphetamines, officials have told a three-day meet in Beijing, attended by six Asian nations along with a U.N. drug control group.

Authorities are becoming particularly concerned about these drugs -- which can come in pill, capsule or powder form and stimulate the heart beat -- because they can be made in small and portable backyard labs.

While less Europeans and Americans are snorting or sniffing these artifical stimulants, East Asian and Pacific demand is booming and far outstripping the desire for plant-based drugs like opium and heroin, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNDCP) said in a recent report.

More than 80 percent of the world's amphetamine seizures were made in East and Southeast Asia in 2000, statistics show.

Facing the heat

China has come under the spotlight because more and more artificial stimulants are being mixed in clandestine laboratories across the country, according to officials.

The Eastern giant is the largest supplier of synthetic drugs in Asia, along with Myanmar and the Philippines, according to the UNDCP.

Traffickers from Shanghai to Guangdong are working with cartels to make "ice" under the guise of producing legitimate goods, and smuggling it beyond China's borders, Reuters news agency quoted Wang Gang, deputy secretary general of the National Narcotics Control Commission, as telling the meeting.

Cartels too are diversifying from their old wares to make the synthetic drugs -- which include animal anesthetic ketamine, 80-year-old illegal drug ecstasy and ice -- in a bid to boost their coffers.

Already, the number of drug addicts in China has risen sixfold over the past decade.

"The abuse of ecstasy in entertainment pubs in large and medium cities of China was increasingly conspicuous, which undermines both the physical and mental health of the young people," said Wang.

In Hong Kong, sniffing ketamine has become more popular with locals than taking ecstasy, says Kenny Ip, chief superintendent of the territory's narcotics bureau, adding there was no shortage of supply in the market.

In its single largest seizure last year, Hong Kong customs nabbed 45 kilos of ketamine powder coming through the relatively porous mainland border.

'Heroin hotbed'

But even as China battles a thriving synthetic drug trade on its southeastern coast, Beijing is pushing its southwestern neighbors to clean up their poppy-growing act, in a much older war on drugs.

China said on Monday that Southeast Asia faced a grim battle with drug rings in the notorious heroin hotbed known as the Golden Triangle and called for tougher joint efforts to stem the tide.

The Golden Triangle straddles the area where the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet.

According to the U.S. State Department, Myanmar regained its spot as the world's top source of heroin from Afghanistan in 2001, though its opium yield survey conducted jointly with the United Sates showed a drop of more than 20 percent from 2000.

The six East and Southeast nations attending the conference -- China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia -- agreed in the mid-1990s to crack down on trafficking, abuse and related crimes like money laundering.

Chinese police confiscated some 13 tons of heroin from the Golden Triangle in 2001 in a crackdown centered on 17 high traffic districts, said Wang, adding that 4.8 tons of ice and 207 million tablets of ecstasy were seized on the mainland last year.

China has stepped up its crackdown on drugs as sweeping economic reforms have boosted incomes and caused the number of known drug addicts to rocket in recent years.

China has about 900,000 registered drug addicts -- most of them hooked on heroin -- up from 148,000 in 1991.

However, some foreign experts say the number of addicts in the country of 1.3 billion people may be as high as seven million.