Drugs smuggled from China are destroying the region, and Beijing needs to shelve political disputes with Taiwan and work together to fight the problem, Taiwan's drug czar said yesterday.
About 60 percent of the drugs seized by Taiwanese authorities last year were from the southern Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Guangdong and Hainan island, said Yang Kuang-chuan (
Taiwan's efforts to stop the smuggling of heroin, opium, marijuana and amphetamines from China "were encountering difficulties because the talks between the two sides have not resumed," Yang said.
"We appeal to you to tell China that we have to talk about this," Yang told reporters during a tour of the bureau's facilities and warehouse for seized drugs.
Yang said that drugs produced along the mountainous borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos in the area known as the "Golden Triangle" were shipped out of China due to lax drug enforcement along China's southern coast.
As of this month, about 81kg of heroin have been seized in northern Taiwan. From 1990 to 2000, about 17,000kg of heroin and amphetamines were seized by Taiwanese authorities, Yang said.
Yang said however that many illegal chemists and clandestine laboratories that refine opium from China into heroin exported to North America "have moved out of Taiwan to other Southeast Asian countries."
"Generally speaking, business has been slow these days" in Taiwan, Yang said.
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