Battling a sharp rise in drug use with over 14 million addicts, China has arrested 1.69 lakh narcotic crime suspects last year while it made efforts to plug the main source of narcotics from the Golden Triangle, one of Asia's biggest opium producing areas.
Over 1.69 lakh drug crime suspects were arrested last year, 60 per cent of whom were under the age of 35, with nearly 90 per cent having failed to finish middle school, an official report released here said.
It said China had 2.95 million registered drug addicts at the end of 2014, but the real number who have used narcotics is thought to have exceeded 14 million - which means one out of every 100 Chinese may have used drugs, Liu Yuejin, assistant minister of public security said.
Although the spread of traditional drugs such as heroine has been largely curbed, the number of identified synthetic drug addicts has risen sharply to 1.46 million, six times the number in 2008.
Drug users are becoming younger, according to the report.
Among the 4,80,000 newly identified drug users in 2014, 29,000 were under the age of 18 and around three quarters were under the age of 35.
The report on China's drug situation, the first of its kind, said drug smuggling is rampant and "more and more organised and professional criminals are carrying out smuggling in covert and cunning ways through multiple and constantly changing channels".
It also said the Golden Triangle in southeast Asia, involving Myanmar, Laos and Thailand remained the largest drug source for China's traffickers, accounting for over 90 per cent of narcotics seized by law enforcement agencies in 2014.
The Golden Triangle is one of the biggest source of opium trafficking in Asia after Golden Crescent, involving Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
Most of the heroin and methamphetamine consumed in China came from the Golden Triangle, the report said.
In 2014, Chinese law enforcers captured 93 tonnes of heroin and 11. 4 tonnes of methamphetamine.
The amount of Golden Crescent heroin seized in China was not alarming, but the threat shall not be ignored, the report warned.
Potential heroin production in Afghanistan was estimated at 670 tonnes, the largest producing area in the world.
Heroin imported from the region accounted for 1.4 per cent of total seizures in China in 2014 in over ten provinces, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Cocaine from South America also entered China from time to time, detected in 12 provincial regions, the report said.
