"We do not rule out the possibility of compelling all drug abusers in the capital to give up their addictions before the Olympics," Fu Zhenghua, deputy director of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying.

The report did not say how Fu proposed to identify all the city's drug addicts or what methods would be used to compel them into rehab.

Beijing's leaders have staked the country's prestige on running a successful 2008 Summer Games and have raised expectations in the sports and business worlds the event will set a new standard for the Olympic movement.

The number of known addicts in China rose by 35 percent to 1.2 million over the period 2000-05, according to the government. That included 700,000 heroin users, more than two-thirds of them under age 35.