Chinese police have vowed to crack down on drug trafficking by improving their scientific knowledge and the nation's legal system.

This is the message conveyed by the national working conference on drug control held Sunday in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, the most important trail through which drugs from the Golden Triangle snake their way into China.

Zhou Yongkang, director of China's National Narcotics Control Commission, expressed the country's strong determination to continue its anti-drug fight this year.

Zhou, also minister of public security, said the nation will step up campaigns to fight banned narcotics and continue to create more drug-free communities and villages, while improving co-operation with international agencies in the battle against drug trafficking.

Statistics from the General Administration of Customs released Sunday show that through May agents across the country cracked 42 major drug-trafficking cases, involving 162 kilograms of illicit drugs.

The joint efforts in February of police in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province and Hefei, capital of East China's Anhui Province, uncovered the method through which the drugs passed through the mail.

The year has seen a total of 18 major cases, each involving more than 1 kilogram and altogether 158 kilograms, double the amount from the same period last year, data from the Ministry of Public Security showed.

There are as many as 546,900 cases involving drug smuggling and trafficking that have been uncovered from 1998 through last year across the country with the capture of 51.03 tons of heroin.

The police also confiscated 52.43 tons of methamphetamines, 14.73 tons of opium and 1,412.5 tons of other chemicals that can be easily turned into drugs.

The country registered 1.053 million drugs users by the end of last year.

In one of the latest cases in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province, police arrested three suspected drug traffickers from Taiwan and seized 23 kilograms of Ketamine, a kind of narcotic on Friday.

Working on a tip-off, officers sprang an ambush in Xiamen and detained suspects surnamed Yang and Luo, two intermediates who help to transport the tea bags with narcotics inside from Guangdong to Xiamen. The police later found their commander, another Yang in Songbai Community in the city.

Preliminary investigation showed that all the three suspects were from Jinmen and they bought the Ketamine in Guangdong and the final destination of their narcotics was Taiwan.

At about the same time, some 80 police officers in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province, raided a disco early on Saturday.

The action resulted in capture of 37.2 grams of narcotics and the detention of 53 people, among whom 18 were confirmed as having taken either crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice or Ecstasy. The possibility of taking Ketamine by some of the rest was not ruled out.

The disco bar was ordered to close and the case is under the investigation.

In another development, police of Southwest China's Guizhou Province smashed two narcotics trafficking cases, capturing three suspects and 13,000 tablets of ice.

The local public security bureau in the city of Liupanshui said that the anti-drug police officers detected more than 9,000 tablets of ice, weighing about 900 grams, in a car with Beijing licence plate and seized two suspects on the spot on June 8.

The suspects confessed that the drugs were bought from Yunnan Province, the main trafficking route in the country and would be transported to Guangzhou to trade.

Another case was about a week later when local police officers intercepted a coach at Pu'an County of Guizhou after receiving clues, seizing a suspect with 4,499 tablets of ice bound on his stomach with adhesive tape.

On June 19, Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality captured 3,000 Ecstasy tablets worth 300,000 yuan (US$36,276) and seven drug addicts in a club.

In another case in Yunnan, the local police uncovered a major transnational drug trafficking case and seized two suspects at the scene.

The border defence captured two M46 grenades and 110 kilograms of ice. This was the largest cross-border case detected by Yunnan police this year.

(China Daily June 21, 2004)