While stemming the trafficking of drugs from abroad, the Chinese government has continuously organized special battles against drugs, constantly focussing attention on areas where drugs constitute a serious problem and hitting hard at drug crimes at home. In the three consecutive years from 1983 to 1986, China launched a nationwide campaign to crack down on criminal offenses, targeted mainly at drug-related crimes. From 1993 to 1996, in the southwest border areas, the Ministry of Public Security launched a three-year campaign against drugs and firearms. In 1997, according to a unified deployment the NNCC launched a momentous anti-drug campaign nationwide, with great success. From 1991 to 1999, China's drug-control organs cracked more than 800,000 drug cases, and confiscated 39.67 tons of heroin, 16.894 tons of opium, 15.079 tons of marijuana and 23.375 tons of methamphetamine.
China is a country with a large population.
So it needs a lot of legal narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. While endeavoring to protect people's health and meet the needs of medical treatment the government practices strict control of 118 narcotic drugs and 119 psychotropic substances, and their production, trading, use and import and export are restricted to prevent illegal circulation. The health and pharmaceuticals control and management departments, as well as the agricultural, industrial and commercial administration, foreign trade, customs, public security, railway, civil aviation and other transport departments in different areas carry out security checks every year on the production, trading, transportation, and import and export of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. The illegal production, trafficking and supply or abuse of such drugs and substances are promptly investigated and punished. A large number of criminal cases of stealing, illegal buying and selling or addiction of pethidine and other narcotic drugs have been investigated and severely dealt with in Heilongjiang, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the northern part of China.