Chinese police have busted a total of 74,419 cases of drug-related crimes, nabbed 49,097 criminal suspects and seized tons of heroin, opium, "ice" and ecstasy pills in the first nine months of the nationwide campaign against narcotics.

Police have seized 7,167 kilograms of heroin, 1,819 kilograms of opium, 4,511 kilograms of "ice," 879,000 ecstasy pills and 1,593 kilograms of ketamine in the January-September period, the Office of National Narcotics Control Commission told a press conference Thursday.

The office also announced that Chinese police seized 131.9 tons of precursor chemicals from January to September.

The office said that most of the precursor chemicals, such as phenyl acetone, ephedrine, acetone, toluene, hydrochloric acid and sulphuric acid, come from domestic sources.

From January to July this year, police dismantled 27 ice and ecstasy labs.

Yang Fengrui, deputy Secretary-General of the National Narcotics Control Commission, said since the Chinese government launched the "people's war against drugs" in April, a series of achievements have been achieved.

The development of drug prevention campaign has made new achievements in containing the emergence of new drug users. In order to contain the development and expansion of new types of drugs including ice, ecstasy, ketamine, the National Narcotics Control Commission (NNCC) has deployed centralized national popularization and education activities on prevention of new types of drugs.

With the obvious increase of people's awareness of participation in drug control, reports from citizens on clues of drug related crimes have increased.

Through people's reports, southwestern China's Yunnan Province has busted 885 cases of drug related crimes, captured 977 crime suspects, seized 860 kilograms of drugs and cashed in up to 1 million yuan of awards to the citizens who reported clues in the first half of this year, Yang said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 27, 2005)