Chinese police cracked as many as 38,000 cases involving illicit drugs from January 2024 to January this year, seizing 28.1 metric tons of the drugs and capturing seven major fugitives, the Ministry of Public Security said.

In 2024, police officers cracked 151 cases involving materials used for making illicit drugs, seizing more than 1,400 tons of such materials, the ministry said in a statement issued on Friday.

Since last year, police across the country have also deepened their efforts to fight new types of illicit drugs and fentanyl-related substances, the statement said.

The police have worked with other departments to tackle the abuse of narcotic and psychotropic drugs and new psychoactive substances, and effectively curbed the spread of the abuse, it added.

Targeting young people's abuse of electronic cigarettes containing etomidate, a substance used for anesthesia that has been regulated in the country since October 2023, the police have carried out a special campaign to dismantle dens making etomidate, according to the ministry.

It also worked with the Office of China National Narcotics Control Commission and the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, and came up with a guideline to crack down on the manufacturing and sales of such "high-inducing electronic cigarettes".

Last year, China added as many as 46 new psychoactive substances and four narcotic and psychotropic drugs to its controlled drug list, and added seven substances to its list of regulated precursor chemicals, it said.

At the same time, China added 24 items to its list of precursor chemicals the export of which to Myanmar, Laos and Afghanistan must obtain government approval in advance.

The country's police have also promoted counternarcotics cooperation within different international frameworks, including the United Nations, INTERPOL and the Greater Mekong Subregion, it said.

From June to August last year, China and Thailand carried out a joint campaign to target cross-border drug crimes along the Mekong River. During the campaign, the two countries cooperated with Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam to crack 11,000 criminal drug cases, nabbing 18,000 suspects, according to the ministry.

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