Seeing through the club-drug haze
Because of increasing pressure at work, low risk-awareness, peer pressure and easy access, club drugs are becoming increasingly popular among Chinese youth.
Xiao Liu, a college freshman studying in Beijing, frequents nightclubs on weekends. She often sees groups of young people taking drugs and then dancing frantically in drug-induced crazes. She would shun them, because she believed they were "dangerous" people.
Club drugs become popular for young Chinese, white-collar workers, sport stars and entertainers. The drugs are usuallly taken in night clubs. Wang Bin |
These drugs, collectively termed "new-type drugs", or "club drugs", include marijuana, MDMA - a synthetic and psychoactive drug - and ketamine - a psychoactive known to induce dream-like states and hallucinations.
Trafficking of traditional drugs has decreased thanks to intensified crackdowns, according to director of National Institute of Drug Dependence of Peking University Lu Lin. But club drugs are flourishing in their place, because the ingredients are easily obtained and the processes for manufacturing them are simple. They can be easily produced in small, underground workshops.
Statistics from Beijing Public Security Bureau Drug Abstention Center show that the percentage of club-drug addicts has risen 15 percent in the past five years.
Du Xinzhong, a medical staffer from Jinhua Drug Abstention Center, in Zhejiang Province, has also seen the trends change.
Compared to the stable or even slightly decreased number of heroin addicts, the number of club-drug addicts in his center has increased several times over.
Because physical addiction to club drugs is less apparent than physical addiction to hard drugs, such as heroin, few addicts recognize their addictions.
Lu said that most users are younger Chinese, white-collar workers, sports stars and entertainers.
He says that scientific research has shown that the use of club drugs can cause serious health problems that many users are unaware of, and long-term use of these substances can cause deterioration of memory, recognition and brain growth.
Du considers club drugs even more harmful than heroin.
According to his clinical observations, the harm caused by long-term use of club drugs is irreversible and could lead to paranoia, hallucinations, depression and personality shifts.
Because many of these drugs have aphrodisiac-like effects and make users feel as if the barriers between people are brought down, some users become more inclined to participate in unsafe sex, which could transmit STDs such as HIV.
(China Daily 06/27/2007 page18)
