In a village in far southwest China, after a nightcap of opium, old Mrs Zha beds down... (pause)In a community of just 300, she’s one of 46 people addicted to opium or heroin...
Mrs Zha: I’ve been taking it for fifty years, she says...I’m sick, and it kills the pain.. She keeps it in a small tin in her underwear.
Mrs Zha’s son is a heroin addict... 20 of their neighbours are infected with HIV, mostly from sharing needles. Three people have died of AIDS..
This is a part of the four-thousand- kilometre borderline that China’s Yunnan province shares with Burma, Laos and Vietnam... Burma is just across the river there.. and beyond are the vast opium poppy fields of the Golden Triangle, source of 60% of the world’s heroin.. Since China opened up these frontiers in the 1980s, the border trade has flourished.. and Yunnan province has found itself at the heart of one of the most lucrative narcotics routes in the world.
The trail starts here, at Jie Gao on the Burma border.. This old Chinese shantytown has sprung up into a thriving special economic zone.. Half of all Yunnan’s border trade now passes along this dusty track...
Mr Wang: This is our import-export depot, it’s just inside China.. the border is ten metres over there. Mr. Wang is in charge of the border.
Mr Wang: The border trade here is increasing by about 25% a year. Last year it was worth two thousand million yuan.
We have a saying - our hens can lay eggs in Burma, and their pumpkins can bear fruit in China. Security is not very tight. It’s a friendly border.
But the Burmese merchants that ply this lucrative trade route bring more than just pumpkins..Every year tons of narcotics make the journey too...
The town’s tiny customs post hasn’t a chance of controlling what’s coming in.. In fact China’s leaders blame the active involvement of some authorities for the growth in the smuggling trade.
Mr. Wang:Our facilities here are quite backward and simple, they can’t meet the needs of the growing border trade. We need a computer system, but we haven’t had time.I have to say there are holes in the system, so smuggling does go on.
The drug trail follows route 302 from the border to China’s eastern seaboard - a road that’s now thought to carry a large part of the heroin flowing from Asia to the west..
Yunnan was once a rural backwater, home to one-third of China’s ethnic minorities..
Now this peaceful province has found itself in the middle of a war over drugs.
As route 302 winds its way inland, police search vehicles coming from the border for drugs and firearms...The fight against narcotics has been declared a major national priority... The penalties for trafficking are severe.. Anyone found with more than fifty grams of drugs is executed.
But narcotics control here has holes you can drive a truck through... Two thousand vehicles pass through this police checkpoint every day.. The police say they check only one of two hundred of them... The rest drive straight through... (pause).. and on to Yunnan’s provincial capital Kunming...
For the majority of China’s drug users, this is where the narcotics trail ends...
Kunming is China’s wild south-west... a town well out of reach of the long arm of the law administered 2-thousand kilometres away in Beijing...
Among the youth of this thriving frontier town, drug use has become part of the way of life...
Vice Governor: For the local Communist Party leadership, it’s the source of national shame...
In China’s history the invasion of drugs has brought humiliation and misery. We hate drugs, we despise them. On the issue of forbidding and cracking down on drugs, our attitude could not be more clear.. But we recognise that drug dealing is a highly profitable business, there will always be people who’ll take the risk. So, despite our crackdown the problem still exists.
Local experts say there are now up to 70,000 narcotics addicts in Yunnan... In some parts there’s an addict in every family.
They hang out in the streets and in the parks.. They have nothing to do and nowhere to go. If they’re caught they’re arrested and jailed.
Street noise, fade up talking..
I started in 1988 or ‘89. It was just after the border opened up. It was quite chaotic then, drug smuggling was really quite easy..
Xia Wu has been on heroin for four years.. He started out smoking, but like many here recently started injecting, because it’s cheaper and gives a stronger hit..
Xia Wu: At the time we Chinese didn’t know much about drugs. We had no idea how harmful they were. It just seemed like a really cool thing to do, a way of gaining social status. That’s how we got hooked.
But there’s no sympathy for drug-addicts here...
Drug abuse here is viewed not as an illness, but as a crime.. and it’s the police who administer the cure.. The penalty for drug use is a mandatory three to six months forced detoxification, in a drug treatment centre run by the police.
The detox centre outside Kunming, run by the public Security Bureau, has treated ten-thousand addicts since it was set up three-and-a-half years ago..
Foreign journalists aren’t allowed in. But police videotape faithfully documents the traumas inside..
The method is simple - withdrawal by force..
There’s no care, no counselling, and no rehabilitation.. (pause).. just cold turkey, as bad as it gets.
And afterwards more than 95% go back to using drugs.
Girl on police video: “Drugs are devastating. I used to be a very active girl, now I’m like this. I need money to buy drugs every day, so I have to do bad things. I really want to give up drugs.”
Dr Li says the government’s system of detox alone, without rehabilitation, simply doesn’t work. He says drastic measures are needed to cope with the epidemic of drug use and a looming epidemic of AIDS.
Dr Li Jianhua, Yunnan Institute of Drug Abuse: In 1989 a survey showed that most drug-users here were taking opium rather than heroin.. Now that’s changing. Selling opium isn’t easy, because it’s big and heavy and it smells. Drug dealers don’t like it, they prefer to deal in heroin. As a result opium smoking has declined while heroin use has increased.
As intravenous drug use has soared, Yunnan has become the HIV capital of China.. with 80% of the HIV cases in the whole country..
A huge sex industry has brought sexually transmitted disease in epidemic proportions.. Dozens of private clinics line the streets.. advertising the gory symptoms, and offering traditional herbal cures for venereal disease..
At the Kunming Anti-Epidemic Centre, a small team led by Dr Cheng He He tries to come to terms with the rapid spread of HIV.
Most intravenous drug-users share needles, in the border area almost 100% of them do. In the places nearest the border the rate of HIV among iv drug users could be up to 90%.
Q. I understand in some villages almost every family has someone using narcotics?
Dr Cheng He He, Dept. of AIDS Prevention: I can’t say every family, but certainly many young males are addicts.
Q. How big a threat do you think AIDS poses for China?
Dr He He: All over China there are also high-risk groups and risky behaviour. The infection will spread quickly. This is the danger I fear China is facing.
The authorities say they’re winning the war against drugs.. But at night on the streets of Kunming you hear a different story..
At the moment the authorities are having a crackdown. But the drug users have just gone underground. As long as we’re careful, it’s impossible for us to be caught.
Q. How common is narcotics use?
Prostitute: Amongst my friends, I guess it’s probably 80%.
The drug trade has spawned rampant prostitution.. and a nightlife that revolves around drugs and sex..
They might like to call it socialism with Chinese characteristics, but this is capitalism in the raw... and the same old rules of supply and demand apply..
This back street is full of beauty parlors and hair salons. These services are a front; the service they’re really providing is sex.
At dancing halls like this one, parading models titillate the audience, and then escorts employed by the bar solicit clients for dancing, or sex..
While China’s leaders hail their economic revolution, it’s left to people like Dr Li to try to stitch back together the unravelling social fabric of Yunnan..
For third world countries and poor area, economic development can be a kind of blow. It creates all sorts of psychological problems. People ask why are others so rich when we’re so poor. If they can’t stand the stress, they turn to drugs.
People keep hoping for a wonder cure, they don’t realize it’s not just a personal problem, it’s an issue for the whole society.
Yunnan was once a rural backwater, home to one-third of China’s ethnic minorities..
Now this peaceful province has found itself in the middle of a war over drugs.
It’s a battle documented on video by Chinese police.
“Police! Police! Surrender! Think of the innocent people, the elderly, children and women ...There’s no use resisting...”
The vast profits from the narcotics trade have allowed powerful local warlords to take control of parts of Yunnan...
In this videotaped showdown 2000 paramilitary police were used to storm a local drug baron’s hideout, after a siege that lasted 80 days...
More than 200 suspects were arrested... and 2000 kilograms of narcotics were found...Ten ringleaders were put to death...
The police claimed victory, in what they called “a life and death struggle between the forces of evil and the law.
But the police themselves are forced to admit it’s a losing battle... Drug abuse is now endemic in Yunnan.
Police: “At the end of 1988 we found the first heroin addict here. Since then it’s shocking to see how drug use has been increasing....”
“This used to be a happy family until the woman started taking drugs. Now she just lies on the bed. The sheets are rotting, there’s rubbish on the floor so thick you can’t put your feet down...”“In this small room, there are three addicts. If we hadn’t filmed it, no-one would bnelieve this could be happening in the 1990s.”
Mrs Zha: I’ve been taking it for fifty years, she says...I’m sick, and it kills the pain.. She keeps it in a small tin in her underwear.
Mrs Zha’s son is a heroin addict... 20 of their neighbours are infected with HIV, mostly from sharing needles. Three people have died of AIDS..
This is a part of the four-thousand- kilometre borderline that China’s Yunnan province shares with Burma, Laos and Vietnam... Burma is just across the river there.. and beyond are the vast opium poppy fields of the Golden Triangle, source of 60% of the world’s heroin.. Since China opened up these frontiers in the 1980s, the border trade has flourished.. and Yunnan province has found itself at the heart of one of the most lucrative narcotics routes in the world.
The trail starts here, at Jie Gao on the Burma border.. This old Chinese shantytown has sprung up into a thriving special economic zone.. Half of all Yunnan’s border trade now passes along this dusty track...
Mr Wang: This is our import-export depot, it’s just inside China.. the border is ten metres over there. Mr. Wang is in charge of the border.
Mr Wang: The border trade here is increasing by about 25% a year. Last year it was worth two thousand million yuan.
We have a saying - our hens can lay eggs in Burma, and their pumpkins can bear fruit in China. Security is not very tight. It’s a friendly border.
But the Burmese merchants that ply this lucrative trade route bring more than just pumpkins..Every year tons of narcotics make the journey too...
The town’s tiny customs post hasn’t a chance of controlling what’s coming in.. In fact China’s leaders blame the active involvement of some authorities for the growth in the smuggling trade.
Mr. Wang:Our facilities here are quite backward and simple, they can’t meet the needs of the growing border trade. We need a computer system, but we haven’t had time.I have to say there are holes in the system, so smuggling does go on.
The drug trail follows route 302 from the border to China’s eastern seaboard - a road that’s now thought to carry a large part of the heroin flowing from Asia to the west..
Yunnan was once a rural backwater, home to one-third of China’s ethnic minorities..
Now this peaceful province has found itself in the middle of a war over drugs.
As route 302 winds its way inland, police search vehicles coming from the border for drugs and firearms...The fight against narcotics has been declared a major national priority... The penalties for trafficking are severe.. Anyone found with more than fifty grams of drugs is executed.
But narcotics control here has holes you can drive a truck through... Two thousand vehicles pass through this police checkpoint every day.. The police say they check only one of two hundred of them... The rest drive straight through... (pause).. and on to Yunnan’s provincial capital Kunming...
For the majority of China’s drug users, this is where the narcotics trail ends...
Kunming is China’s wild south-west... a town well out of reach of the long arm of the law administered 2-thousand kilometres away in Beijing...
Among the youth of this thriving frontier town, drug use has become part of the way of life...
Vice Governor: For the local Communist Party leadership, it’s the source of national shame...
In China’s history the invasion of drugs has brought humiliation and misery. We hate drugs, we despise them. On the issue of forbidding and cracking down on drugs, our attitude could not be more clear.. But we recognise that drug dealing is a highly profitable business, there will always be people who’ll take the risk. So, despite our crackdown the problem still exists.
Local experts say there are now up to 70,000 narcotics addicts in Yunnan... In some parts there’s an addict in every family.
They hang out in the streets and in the parks.. They have nothing to do and nowhere to go. If they’re caught they’re arrested and jailed.
Street noise, fade up talking..
I started in 1988 or ‘89. It was just after the border opened up. It was quite chaotic then, drug smuggling was really quite easy..
Xia Wu has been on heroin for four years.. He started out smoking, but like many here recently started injecting, because it’s cheaper and gives a stronger hit..
Xia Wu: At the time we Chinese didn’t know much about drugs. We had no idea how harmful they were. It just seemed like a really cool thing to do, a way of gaining social status. That’s how we got hooked.
But there’s no sympathy for drug-addicts here...
Drug abuse here is viewed not as an illness, but as a crime.. and it’s the police who administer the cure.. The penalty for drug use is a mandatory three to six months forced detoxification, in a drug treatment centre run by the police.
The detox centre outside Kunming, run by the public Security Bureau, has treated ten-thousand addicts since it was set up three-and-a-half years ago..
Foreign journalists aren’t allowed in. But police videotape faithfully documents the traumas inside..
The method is simple - withdrawal by force..
There’s no care, no counselling, and no rehabilitation.. (pause).. just cold turkey, as bad as it gets.
And afterwards more than 95% go back to using drugs.
Girl on police video: “Drugs are devastating. I used to be a very active girl, now I’m like this. I need money to buy drugs every day, so I have to do bad things. I really want to give up drugs.”
Dr Li says the government’s system of detox alone, without rehabilitation, simply doesn’t work. He says drastic measures are needed to cope with the epidemic of drug use and a looming epidemic of AIDS.
Dr Li Jianhua, Yunnan Institute of Drug Abuse: In 1989 a survey showed that most drug-users here were taking opium rather than heroin.. Now that’s changing. Selling opium isn’t easy, because it’s big and heavy and it smells. Drug dealers don’t like it, they prefer to deal in heroin. As a result opium smoking has declined while heroin use has increased.
As intravenous drug use has soared, Yunnan has become the HIV capital of China.. with 80% of the HIV cases in the whole country..
A huge sex industry has brought sexually transmitted disease in epidemic proportions.. Dozens of private clinics line the streets.. advertising the gory symptoms, and offering traditional herbal cures for venereal disease..
At the Kunming Anti-Epidemic Centre, a small team led by Dr Cheng He He tries to come to terms with the rapid spread of HIV.
Most intravenous drug-users share needles, in the border area almost 100% of them do. In the places nearest the border the rate of HIV among iv drug users could be up to 90%.
Q. I understand in some villages almost every family has someone using narcotics?
Dr Cheng He He, Dept. of AIDS Prevention: I can’t say every family, but certainly many young males are addicts.
Q. How big a threat do you think AIDS poses for China?
Dr He He: All over China there are also high-risk groups and risky behaviour. The infection will spread quickly. This is the danger I fear China is facing.
The authorities say they’re winning the war against drugs.. But at night on the streets of Kunming you hear a different story..
At the moment the authorities are having a crackdown. But the drug users have just gone underground. As long as we’re careful, it’s impossible for us to be caught.
Q. How common is narcotics use?
Prostitute: Amongst my friends, I guess it’s probably 80%.
The drug trade has spawned rampant prostitution.. and a nightlife that revolves around drugs and sex..
They might like to call it socialism with Chinese characteristics, but this is capitalism in the raw... and the same old rules of supply and demand apply..
This back street is full of beauty parlors and hair salons. These services are a front; the service they’re really providing is sex.
At dancing halls like this one, parading models titillate the audience, and then escorts employed by the bar solicit clients for dancing, or sex..
While China’s leaders hail their economic revolution, it’s left to people like Dr Li to try to stitch back together the unravelling social fabric of Yunnan..
For third world countries and poor area, economic development can be a kind of blow. It creates all sorts of psychological problems. People ask why are others so rich when we’re so poor. If they can’t stand the stress, they turn to drugs.
People keep hoping for a wonder cure, they don’t realize it’s not just a personal problem, it’s an issue for the whole society.
Yunnan was once a rural backwater, home to one-third of China’s ethnic minorities..
Now this peaceful province has found itself in the middle of a war over drugs.
It’s a battle documented on video by Chinese police.
“Police! Police! Surrender! Think of the innocent people, the elderly, children and women ...There’s no use resisting...”
The vast profits from the narcotics trade have allowed powerful local warlords to take control of parts of Yunnan...
In this videotaped showdown 2000 paramilitary police were used to storm a local drug baron’s hideout, after a siege that lasted 80 days...
More than 200 suspects were arrested... and 2000 kilograms of narcotics were found...Ten ringleaders were put to death...
The police claimed victory, in what they called “a life and death struggle between the forces of evil and the law.
But the police themselves are forced to admit it’s a losing battle... Drug abuse is now endemic in Yunnan.
Police: “At the end of 1988 we found the first heroin addict here. Since then it’s shocking to see how drug use has been increasing....”
“This used to be a happy family until the woman started taking drugs. Now she just lies on the bed. The sheets are rotting, there’s rubbish on the floor so thick you can’t put your feet down...”“In this small room, there are three addicts. If we hadn’t filmed it, no-one would bnelieve this could be happening in the 1990s.”