CHINA TELLS SE ASIA 'ICE' PROBLEM AS BAD AS OPIUM

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

The region's drug battle also must focus equal attention on amphetamine
types like "ice" and "ecstasy," increasingly mixed in clandestine Chinese
laboratories, senior drug official Wang Gang told counterparts from five
Southeast Asian neighbors and the United Nations (news - web sites) at the
start of a three-day meeting.

"The global and regional drug situation remains pregnant with grim
possibilities. Inevitably, China continues to be infringed upon
tremendously by the drugs," said Wang, deputy secretary general of the
National Narcotics Control Commission.

"All relevant countries should grasp the precious opportunity, get rid of
jealousy and complaints, and make cooperation more and more active and
practical," he said, according to a printed copy of his speech.

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

China, where official the number of drug addicts is up sixfold over the
past decade, has pressed its poppy-growing neighbors to the southwest to
clean up their act even as it confronts a booming synthetic drug trade on
its southeastern coast.

Traffickers from Shanghai to Guangdong province colluded with regional
cartels to manufacture the methamphetamine "ice" under the guise of
producing licit chemical products and smuggled a large quantity of it
beyond China's borders, said Wang.

Wang said opium poppy cultivation and production in the Golden Triangle hit
a new record in 2001, but gave no figures.

Poppy cultivation in hectares declined from 128,642 in 2000 to 123,075 in
2001, according to a February 2002 United Nations International Drug
Control Program (UNDCP) report.

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

New Drugs

China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) in the mid-1990s to tighten regional coordination
against rampant trafficking, abuse and related crimes like money laundering.

Seventy percent of heroin and morphine seizures occurred in Asia in 1999
and more than 80 percent of the world's amphetamine seizures were made in
East and Southeast Asia in 2000, according to a statement from the MOU
Senior Officials Committee.

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.

Anti-drug strategies should place equal emphasis on traditional drugs such
as heroin and new types of drugs such as "ice," he said.

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.

"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.