Drugs village on road to recovery thanks to police
POLICE officer Li Jianzhao was once hated by the residents of Boshe, a coastal village in south China’s Guangdong Province.
The village of 14,000 in Lufeng County was a center for the production and trade of drugs, with over a third of the crystal methamphetamine consumed in China originating in Boshe and neighboring villages. One in five families were directly involved in drug production.
Li started work in Boshe the day after a raid in December 2013, when more than 3,000 armed police with helicopters and speedboats stormed the village, arresting 183 people and seizing 3 tons of the drug.
Today, Li leads 30 officers who continue to sniff out narcotics and maintain security.
Before the 2013 raid, Boshe was off limits to police. “When I started work here, the village was totally stinking, with sewage running everywhere, the ground covered by garbage and the air stinking of chemicals,” Li said.
His job was not an easy one. “Making and selling meth was a way of life here. The villagers hated us for cleaning out the drugs,” he said.
When Li made home visits, he couldn’t get anyone to open their door. Patrols were attacked and vehicles vandalized.
“I understand how they felt,” he said. “People said there was no way out of making drugs.”
However, in the past three years, Li and his colleagues have helped the villagers find other ways to make a living.
“The village is beginning to change. There are not so many cold stares now. I even get invited to have tea in their houses,” he said.
Lufeng was a poor county of about 1.8 million people when, in 2009, narcotics production became popular.
To clean up the area and wean them off drugs, the government has built shrimp, geese and pig farms, said Cai Longqiu, Boshe’s Party secretary. “Many young people work in cities like Guangzhou and the villagers have taken up new jobs,” he said.
The wholesale price of a kilogram of meth was 8,000 yuan three years ago, but that had risen to 40,000 yuan last year, said Lin Yizhi, public security chief of Lufeng. “We have squeezed the room for narcotics, and will continue to combat production and trade,” Lin said.
Anti-drug billboards can be seen on the way from Lufeng to Boshe. Wanted notices are posted for suspects on the run.
“It is easy to get tough on drugs, but it is difficult to completely stop the trade if we do not help people to find jobs, and if we do not help them abandon ideas of making quick money and breaking the law,” said Li.
Lin Shaoang, Party secretary of Jiazi township, has suggested building an industrial park and improving port facilities to help people make money.
Li said: “When an area is so heavily influenced by drugs, we cannot count on a few campaigns to clean it all away. Economic development and awareness campaigns are the ultimate solutions.”
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