Government data showed that while the number of cases involving first-degree controlled drugs such as heroin, morphine and cocaine has decreased, the number of cases involving the use or sale of third and fourth-degree controlled drugs — such as rohypnol and ketamine — saw a marked increase in the first half of this year.
According Ministry of the Interior figures, there have been more than 21,000 cases of violation of the Drug Abuse Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例) involving 2,338kg of illegal drugs and 22,459 suspects from January to June this year.
Comparing this year’s figures to those of last year, in the same period of time, the ministry said the number of cases dropped by 4.36 percent while the amount of illegal drugs confiscated dropped by 3.65 percent, or 88.67kg.
“The continuous efforts by the government to fight illegal drugs have led to decrease of violations to the Drug Abuse Prevention Act,” the statement said. “It is especially apparent that the drug-related offenses involving class one drugs have been on the decline.”
However, class three and class four drug offen is increasing.
“Compared to the same period ... last year, there has been a 26.11 percent increase in the use of class three and class four drugs, such as ketamine and flunitrazepam,” the statement said, adding that class 3 and class 4 drug offenses have gone up from 632 cases to 797.
With 3,626 cases of drug offenses, New Taipei City (新北市) ranked the first, Greater Kaohsiung City followed with 2,931 offenses, while Taipei City comes in the third with 2,033 cases of drug offenses.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS