China today said foreign drug dealers have expanded their operations in the country in 2016, including by hiring pregnant and lactating women as carriers, with the flow of narcotics from the Golden Triangle and Golden Crescent opium-producing areas being a particular problem.
The Golden Crescent, which overlaps Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, remains the world's largest area for growing opium and producing heroin, a report by China's National Narcotics Control Commission said.
The Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia remains the main source for methamphetamine consumed in China, it said.
The report said Chinese police had confiscated 430.6 kg of cocaine in 64 smuggling cases last year. Cocaine mainly enters southern China's Guangdong Province and Hong Kong from South America, and by the end of 2016.
In 2016, China handled 22 cases involving heroin being smuggled from the Golden Crescent, seizing 24 kg of heroin, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the NNCC report as saying.
It said that drug trafficking by foreigners has been on the rise in China, and the smuggling of drugs into China is mainly conducted via border areas in Southwest China's Yunnan Province and South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle remains the main source of heroin and methamphetamine in China, the report said, adding that about 44,333 hectares of opium poppy were cultivated in northern Myanmar during the 2015-2016 growing season, a year-on-year increase of 3.7 per cent.
Opium and heroin from the Golden Crescent areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran is trafficked into China also, and the authorities solved 22 cases involving heroin smuggling from the Golden Crescent to China in 2016, seizing 24 kilogrammes of heroin, state-run Global Times reported.
South American cocaine has also been trafficked into China occasionally, mainly arriving in Hong Kong and South China's Guangdong Province.
Liu Yuejin, deputy director of the NNCC said at the press conference that domestic and overseas drug syndicates have organised, hired and controlled special groups to engage in drug trafficking, including pregnant and lactating women, acute infectious patients, seriously ill and disabled people without self-care ability, and HIV carriers.
In 2016, 4,576 Chinese drug traffickers from these special groups and 782 of foreign nationality were captured in China.
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