Official statistics put the number of drug addicts in China at one million but some non-governmental aid agencies say there could be 10 times as many. Heroin seizures have hit record levels, and the same is true for all other drugs, from opium to Ice. Most smugglers bring their product into Yunnan province from Myanmar and Thailand, and from there the traffic spreads northwards and cuts a path across the country to the eastern seaboard. In any city found along these routes, usage and addiction also rises, along with public health problems like HIV infection. The country's response has been to execute those found smuggling and to throw users into detention centres run by the ministry for public security. But still the numbers grow.
On the supply side, China has recognised the international dimensions of the problem and stepped up co-operation with overseas law enforcement agencies and the UN Drug Control Programme. On the demand side, it is also time to try something new.
Several experimental programmes already started in various parts of the country could point the way. As we reported this week, one programme in Yunnan focuses on daily peer counselling sessions, with a success rate of more than 25 per cent. The government rehabilitation centres, on the other hand, are anything but. They require addicts to simply quit - but with little other support to reach their goals. They are work camps, in keeping with a government attitude that drug users and addicts are bad people who need to be punished. The result is that 95 per cent of them are back to their self-destructive habits once they are released.
The experimental programmes from Yunnan and other places show that a more holistic approach, helping the users to understand their problems and to find jobs afterwards, is more effective. The lack of support they get betrays the government's ambivalent attitude towards treatment, if not towards the addicts themselves. NGOs and international aid agencies are already doing work in this area.
It is now time to expand their role, and even to start funding the more successful programmes, which could be prepared to take on most of the treatment now being handled by the government. Small-scale needle-exchange programmes have been launched in a few locations, but they are inadequately funded. If these programmes can lower the risk of HIV and bring users into contact with people who can help them, they should be allowed to grow.
By the government's own estimate, about three-quarters of the country's drug addicts are aged below 35. It would be a shame if so many of China's younger generation were shunted into ineffective programmes that offer little hope, especially when there are alternatives.
