Police act to get latest synthetic drugs off streets
Print Edition
The number of drug cases Shanghai police handed over to prosecutors last year was up 13.8 percent from the previous year, with the number of suspects up 20.8 percent.
New synthetic drugs such as 5-Methoxytryptamine and alprazolam accounted for 68.8 percent of last year’s seizures.
Synthetic drugs including methamphetamine accounted for 83.7 percent of all drugs seized, while the percentage of heroin and marijuana dropped from the previous year.
A total of 97.7 percent of the drugs seized in Shanghai last year was brought in from other parts of the country.
Besides 5-Methoxytryptamine, psychedelic tryptamine made into sex vibrators, other major types of new synthetic drugs last year were flunitrazepam and methylphenidate.
Police warn that the abuse of these drugs can damage people’s mental and physical health.
Wang Qun, an official of the drug-combating department of the police, said flunitrazepam is mainly brought in by people or mailed into China from Japan, while methylphenidate mainly comes from India.
“We have been cooperating with customs to step up checks on people and mail bags from the key countries in drug traffic,” he said.
Shanghai police said they solved three drug cases involving 5-Methoxytryptamine and caught 90 suspects with about 80 people taking the drug punished.
In one of the cases, eight suspects are now facing the charges of producing and selling the drug, police said.
Police started their investigation in April last year with a clue that the drug was being sold on the Internet. The drug was allegedly produced in a fertilizer factory in Baoding City, Hebei Province, by a man surnamed Yang. A man surnamed Qi who is based in Huludao City, Liaoning Province, was in charge of delivering the drugs to buyers in parcels.
On September 11, police found that about 30 kilograms of the liquid drug, in 34 boxes, were due to be delivered.
Qi was caught the next day with about 60 kilograms of the drug in 19,800 potions. All of the delivered boxes were recovered. Within the next six days, all of the other suspects were caught.
Police in Shanghai’s Huangpu District caught eight dealers of flunitrazepam in June and July last year.
Police started their investigation in May when they discovered that a few people in Shanghai previously involved in drug cases were selling the drug over the Internet.
The major suspect in the drug-dealing network was a man surnamed Chen based in Yinchuan City, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
Chen was caught on July 24 with about 107 grams of the drug.
In April this year, Shanghai police caught a drug-dealing suspect from Shanxi Province who allegedly sold methylphenidate drugs and seized 200 pills of the drugs at his home.
Since April this year, police of Huangpu District have solved four crimes involving this kind of drugs, caught five suspects and seized 15 Ritalin tablets and 200 Armodafinil tablets.
Police said the drugs are often sold through WeChat stores and delivered through parcel delivery services which are less strict in checking the contents as well as identities.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
