Illicit Drug use in the Asia Pacific Region - Burnet Institute

Situational analysis of illicit drug issues and responses in the Asia–Pacific region
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As of 2003, a third addition to the data collection
systems to better integrate information
from the different data sources is the Drug
Abuse Surveillance Stations (DASS) established
in all provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities . The information collected
focuses on the quantitative and qualitative
research and treatment demand data . It is
hoped that following installation of computers
throughout the various DASS sites in 2004,
the drug abuse surveillance system will be
enhanced and allow a faster response to the
dynamic drug situation .
As of 2004, there were eight data sources on
drug use in China, including treatment and
rehabilitation centres, hospital clinics and
detention houses of the police . The information
from these sources provides insights into
most indicators of drug use in the country but
not the prevalence of drug use in the wider
population or mortality data among drug
users (National Narcotics Control Commission,
2004a, 2004b; United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime, 2004a; United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime, Regional Centre for East
Asia and the Pacific, 2003b) .
A3 .3 Drug supply, production,
availability, cost and trade
In recent years the trafficking of drugs
through China has increased substantially,
primarily along the 2000-kilometre border
with Myanmar . The proximity of the Golden
Triangle and the Golden Crescent regions —
the world’s largest producers of opium, heroin
and amphetamine-type substances — has been
a major challenge for Chinese authorities in
stemming the trafficking of narcotics across
its national borders . It is reported that most
heroin produced in Myanmar (70–80 tons
per annum) is now trafficked though China,
which has become an important transhipment
route for the international market .
This proliferation of drug trafficking in China
largely emerged as a result of new routes from
Afghanistan into western China, particularly
Xinjiang Province, which complement the
traditional routes from Myanmar . This and
the economic reforms introduced by Deng
Xiaoping in the 1980s have simply made the
drug networks currently penetrating China less
restricted (National Narcotics Control Commission,
2004b; Silk Road Studies Program,
2004; United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime, Regional Centre for East Asia and the
Pacific, 2003a; United States Department of
State, Bureau for International Narcotics and
Law Enforcement Affairs, 2004a) .
Border crossing is easy, particularly along the
long southern border, where high mountains
and dense forest provide substantial cover .
Yunnan Province, bordering on Myanmar,
attracts a large number of drug traffickers and
every means of transporting drugs is used, from
trucks to human bodies . Another important
trafficking route is the 200-kilometre border
between Guangxi Province and Vietnam which
is also mountainous and remote . In this area
there is one official crossing and five ‘semiofficial’
crossings where, for a fee of around
US$0 .05, border crossing is permitted . In other
parts of this area the border is essentially
open — researchers for one recent report
observed hundreds of people (no doubt including
drug users and drug dealers) crossing with
no intervention or supervision (Hammett et al .,
2003; Zhenglai, 2002) .
Drugs transit southern China to the provinces
of Yunnan, Guangxi, Guandong and Fujian
and onwards to south-eastern coastal areas
by various overland methods . Once the
heroin reaches Guandong, it is believed
to be shipped to the cities of Xiaman and
Fuzhou in Fujian Province before being
transported to international markets . Heroin
entering the north-eastern regions of China
is not only from Afghanistan but also from
Pakistan and Tajikistan . It is reported that up
to 20 per cent of heroin entering Xinjiang
Province has its origins from south-west
Asia, particularly Afghanistan . Some parts of
China are more noted than others for drug
trafficking: 10 per cent of China’s narcotics
enter the country in the Lancang Prefecture
located in Yunnan . New transit routes emerge
all the time and one report suggested heroin
was transported from Myanmar to India and
Nepal and then onto China (Drug Enforcement
Administration, Intelligence Division,
2004a; Drug Enforcement Agency, 2002;
French, 2004; Xinzhen, 2004) .
Currently drug traffickers are reducing the
size of their shipments to minimise loss
during seizures . Increasingly, drug traffickers
are found to be women, children and poor
uneducated farmers, who carry the drugs
on or inside their bodies from the Golden
Triangle and then onto various districts of
China . Women couriers swallow 400–500
grams of drugs encased in rubber, then fly
from Kunming to other parts of China under
the pretext of searching for employment .
Most airports do not possess the inspection
instruments for appropriate detection and
thus most drug couriers are not discovered . In
Yunnan Province, depending on the amount
of drugs trafficked, a payback of 1 million
Yuan (US$120,000) was not an uncommon
fee to offer those willing to walk the 30
kilometres into Myanmar and then return to
China, where the drugs would then be sold to
various crime syndicates (Drug Enforcement
Administration, Intelligence Division, 2004a;
French, 2004; Zhenglai, 2002) . Cross-border
drug trafficking among ethnic minority
groups in south-western China has long
been established, particularly because many
of the ethnic groups in these various drug
production areas share kinship connections,
traditional friendships, common languages
and customs (Zhenglai, 2002) .
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Country profiles: China