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Foreword
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The present globalization
of the drug issue has posed a grave menace to human well-being and development.
According to data published by the United Nations in 1998, 21 million
people worldwide suffered from cocaine or heroin addiction, and another
30 million from the abuse of amphetamine-type stimulants. On her southwestern
border China is adjacent to the "Golden Triangle,"one of the
main sources of drugs in the world. Since the late 1970s, the illicit
international narcotics tide has constantly invaded China, and criminal
drug-related activities touched off by transit drug trafficking have re-emerged.
The number of drug addicts has kept rising, drug-related cases have constantly
increased, the drug scourge is becoming more serious with each passing
day, and the situation is grim for the anti-drug struggle. In 1999, China
cracked down 65,000 drug-related criminal cases, and confiscated 5.364
tons of heroin, 1.193 tons of opium, 16.059 tons of crystal methamphetamine
(commonly known as "ice''), and some cocaine, MDMA and marijuana.
In 1999, the number of drug-related cases cracked and the total amount
of drugs confiscated increased by 2.4 percent and 33.6 percent, respectively,
over 1998. The number of drug addicts registered with the public security
organs in 1999 was 148,000, a figure which rose to 520,000 in 1995, and
to 681,000 in 1999. Now drug addicts account for 0.054 percent of China's
total population. Of the drug addicts, those taking heroin make up 71.5
percent, and those under the age of 35 amount to 79.2 percent. By the
end of 1999, of a total of 17,316 reported cases of AIDS virus infection,
those infected by intravenous injections of drugs made up 72.4 percent.
At present, each province, autonomous region, and municipality directly
under the Central Government in China suffers from illegal drug-related
activities to a certain extent, and China has been turned from a victim
of the transit drug trade into a victim of both drug transit and consumption. Illicit drugs bring
calamity to any country and people. Launching an anti-drug struggle to
eliminate the drug scourge is the historical responsibility of the Chinese
government. In old China, drugs once brought hideous disaster to the nation.
But after the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949,
the Chinese government led the Chinese people in a momentous struggle
against drugs. In a short period of three years, China wiped out the scourge
of opium, which had scourged China for a century, thus performing a miracle
acknowledged by the whole world. Confronting the new drug problem, the
Chinese government, taking an attitude of supreme responsibility to the
state, the nation and the people, and the mankind as a whole, and standing
firm in strictly prohibiting illegal drugs, has adopted all necessary
measures and done its utmost to ban illicit drugs for the benefit of the
people. |
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