Heroin abuse contained in China

BEIJING -- The abuse of heroin has been contained in China, according to a report released Friday by the China Food and Drug Administration.

The abuse of heroin has been trending downward in the past five years, but the use of synthetic drugs, typically methamphetamine, has been on the rise, the report said.

Drug abuse happens when a user repeatedly consumes a substance in harmful amounts for non-medicinal purposes. The user develops an addiction to the substance, causing severe personal and public health problems.

Based on 276,000 reports on the supervision of drug abuse submitted by 31 provincial-level regions, the report covers the abuse of heroin, synthetic drugs, medical drugs and new drugs.

Even though heroin abuse has been reined in, attention to its high recurrence rate is needed, the report said.

The proportion of heroin abusers among abusers of all drugs was reduced from 48.6 percent in 2015 to 45 percent in 2016. The percentage has dropped for five years.

However, 63.1 percent of heroin abusers resume use of the substance after treatment, indicating that rehabilitation of heroin abusers remains a priority of drug control work.

The report also stated the scale of synthetic drug abuse is far larger than that of traditional drugs. Abusers of methamphetamine account for 87.4 percent of all synthetic drug abusers.

In order to better contain drug abuse, authorities will improve infrastructure and monitoring systems, expand reporting channels for medical institutions, build drug abuse risk assessment systems and warning systems in 2017.