Country 'could have 2.3m' drug addicts

There could be 2.3 million drug abusers in the country, a senior anti-drug official said yesterday.

The number of known drug addicts in the country has risen to 1 million from 900,000 in 2006, according to the 2008 Annual Report on Drug Control in China.

But Yang Fengrui, director of the anti-drug bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, said: "Our investigations in some high-risk cities show the ratio between known and unidentified drug addicts is about 1:1.3."