New | Chinese police destroy 400 tonnes of crystal meth precursors

Police in Guangdong have incinerated a staggering 400 tonnes of crystal meth ingredients, almost a year after a massive police raid in southern China shut down a major production hub for the drug.

Local police could not be reached on Monday.

On Sunday, the 400 tonnes were incinerated, the newspaper said.

This is far larger than the 16.2 tonnes of crystal meth seized by Chinese authorities in 2012 alone, based on information provided by national authorities to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime. Seizures have more than quadrupled over the preceding decade.

The incineration operation was meant to prevent the recirculation of the precursor material, which could have further spurred the booming production and trade of methamphetamines in southern China.

China dismantled 228 clandestine laboratories producing methamphetamine in 2012, UNODC data shows.

Over the last years, police throughout China had traced meth precursor deliveries to villages near Lufeng, about 200 kilometres east of Hong Kong. In October last year, Guangdong police released a list of 109 wanted drug traders along with their residential addresses, all in Lufeng.

“In the past, everyone knew that they were producing crystal meth in the village,” a police official in Lufeng told the Southern Metropolis Daily. “It was impossible to get into the village and make arrests; one would be surrounded by villagers.”

The raid that led to the seizure on December 29 last year involved more than 3,000 paramilitary police. State media reported the arrest of 182 people in the operation and the seizure of almost three tonnes of crystal meth.

Village Communist party secretary Cai Dongjia was among those arrested in the raid for tolerating the drug cartel in the village.

Most of the white bags containing seized precursors burned on Sunday were filled with ephedra, a type of hemp, which contains key precursor chemicals ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.

Used in the treatment of asthma and seasickness, the shrubs that thrive on Lufeng’s sandy soil can be easily turned into the profitable narcotics.

The burnt ephedra could have produced almost two tonnes of crystal meth, police estimated.