The Kindness Treatment

How one enlightened Chinese province deals with addiction.

South-west China’s Yunnan province, of which Kunming is the capital, has far and away China’s biggest drug problem. The authorities argue that the province’s 4 million people are innocent victims of the international trade in heroin and, increasingly, in synthetic drugs such as amphetamines. They say they have all but eradicated the cultivation of opium poppies in Yunnan, and insist there are no refining centers. Yet Yunnan is the busiest conduit for heroin coming out of ‘the golden triangle’ in the lawless northern regions of Laos, Thailand and, notably, Myanmar.

Yunnan’s hilly borders are porous. It is said of Yunnan’s ethnic minorities that they buy their vegetables on one side of the border and cook their soup on the other. Opium, or refined heroin, can cross as easily as vegetables, and when China’s interior opened up in the 1980s with roads, railways and commerce, international crime syndicates found Yunnan the best route to get their produce to market. Four-fifth of China’s total heroin and opium seizures are in Yunnan province. Drug addiction, and later AIDS, followed the supply routes.

Mao Zedong claimed to have eradicated drugs in China. But the 1990 Yunnan had nearly 58,000 known addicts, more than half the country’s total. The national authorities say there were 800,000 known addicts in China in 2008, an eight-fold increase since 1990. The use of dirty needles has been the main transmitter of AIDS, which first started to appear in China among the border minorities. Government statistics say 15,000 Chinese have the HIV virus, which can develop into AIDS, but officials acknowledge that this is a huge underestimate.

In Yunnan, hard-fisted tactics against drugs, unsurprisingly, predominate. Some 400 dealers are executed each year in the province: national and international anti-drug days are marked by an orgy of public condemnations in Kunming stadiums, followed by swift executions in private. Sun Dahong, the police chief who heads Yunnan’s anti-drug enforcement, says that the province is the first to set up a special force of 13,000 armed police, soldiers and customs guards to stop drugs getting in – or, once in, from getting out. The United States has helped, providing surveillance equipment.

Yet necessity has become the mother of, by Chinese standards, unusual experimentation. The Yunnan authorities have given money and sent 3,000 technical experts to help farmers, mainly in Myanmar, to switch from opium to cash crops, such as cereals, fruit and coffee. Mr Sun says that, thanks to such help, a quarter of the 50,000 hectares given over to opium in Myanmar has been taken out of production. The 30 tonnes of refined opium that have thus been taken off the market each year, he says, is equivalent to more than all that has been seized in Yunnan in the past decade.

What becomes apparent at the Kunming rehabilitation centre is the province’s growing emphasis on prevention and cure for an addiction that police in most other places in China would treat as a crime. “But these are not criminals,” says the centre’s affable Communist Party secretary, “they are just law offenders. Personally, I feel a bit like an old schoolmaster. After all, 80% of the drug addicts on the streets of Kunming know me.” Addicts picked up for the first time in Yunnan are sent for three month’s detoxification in special centres. The Kunming camp, with unguarded gates, has 2,000 inmates, who undergo a mixture of detoxification (using herbal pills, made at the camp, to counter the toxins), counseling and the discipline of a bootcamp.

The reputation of the centre’s approach has spread. Half of the inmates come from other provinces, and a good portion are volunteers who pay 150 yuan ($18) to go clean. One such, a girl from north-eastern Liaoning province, lies in bed, a drip attached. She has just come out of several days’ delirium. Her mother, who came to Yunnan with her to stay at the camp, says, “Now I can get to sleep.” The non-volunteers pay nothing, but, once they are healthy enough, are put to work about the yard, or packing medicine into boxes. They do not seem to mind. One young man sitting eating sunflower seeds in the visiting area with his mother and sister says he had been on heroin for ten years, before coming to the centre. “This place is pretty good. In America you have to buy your own medicine for kicking drugs. We don’t have to here.”

The Kunming police, like the most liberal health-care officials in western countries, talk much of the need for community care and counseling once the inmates return home, as well as education efforts at schools. Some of these local efforts, visiting drug experts say, have had considerable success in keeping people off drugs. Now Yunnan is giving the process a Chinese touch: a law is being drafted that will render community leaders responsible if their charges go back to drugs.

The Kunming centre is one of a number that practice a humanitarian approach to addiction. It is not only China’s biggest, it is almost certainly its best, winning praise from the United Nations anti-drug programme. Some other centres, on the other hand, are not likely to be so welcoming to visiting journalists, particularly grim-named “detoxification-through-labour” camps run by the judiciary. Kunming officials admit that their success is still painfully low: 85% of those that leave the centre, they say, will take up drugs again. But something is working – probably the combination of rehabilitation with community care, and anti-drug education. The number of known addicts in Yunnan has actually fallen, to 20% below its 1990 level. “I don’t want to rub it into the noses of other provinces,” says a local police official, “but in Yunnan we’ve turned the tide.”

(From ‘The Economist’)

 

Choose the best answer to the following questions. To carry out the task successfully pay special attention to the wording of the questions and answers and see if there is an exact or remote connection between the facts mentioned.

 

1. Why are the Yunnan authorities in a position to insist that their people are innocent victims of the international drug trade?

A. Because drug smuggling is an international problem.

B. Because they have come very close to complete eradication of opium poppies cultivated in the province.

C. Because drug law enforcement is quite slack in Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.

2. What fact proves that international crime syndicates really look upon Yunnan as the best route for drug trafficking?

A. Yunnan borders are porous.

B. There are a lot of roads, railways and commerce.

C. Law-enforcement bodies intercept far more heroin and opium in Yunnan than in other provinces.

3. What fact proves a close connection between drug addiction and AIDS infection?

A. Drug addicts might use dirty needles.

B. AIDS first started to appear in China among the border minorities where there are most drug addicts.

C. AIDS appeared after drug addiction began to spread.

4. What fact proves that the measures taken against drug dealers in China are quite harsh?

A. There is a death penalty for drug dealers.

B. Drug dealers are condemned publicly.

C. There is a special police force equipped with surveillance devices to deal with them.

5. Lately, the Yunnan authorities have been fighting the spread of drugs by means of

A. taking measures to reduce the production of drugs.

B. increased efforts to seize drug dealers.

C. taking opium out of production completely.

6. What is peculiar in the efforts of the Kunming authorities to deal with drug abuse as compared to other Chinese provinces?

A. Treating drug addicts as law offenders rather than criminals.

B. Laying emphasis on prevention and cure of drug addiction.

C. Locking drug addicts up in detoxification centres.

7. What is specifically Chinese in the efforts of Yunnan to deal with drug addiction?

A. Local authorities are going to be held responsible if former inmates of detoxification centres do not keep off drugs.

B. Special emphasis on community care and counseling.

C. Education efforts at schools.

8. What does the statement “Some other centres, on the other hand, are not likely to be so welcoming to visiting journalists …” imply?

A. The judiciary prefer to keep their achievements secret.

B. The camps run by the judiciary are not quite successful.

C. Some really draconian measures must be taken in “detoxification-through-labour” camps.