Chemical highs

摘要

All sorts of things can be ordered online in China, but few goods are delivered as fast as ketamine. It takes one hour and 500 yuan ($80), says Nine Ice Dragon Room, a dealer on QQ, an online-messaging service, for five grams of Guangdong's purest "k" to reach an address in central Shanghai. It is an exchange that reflects the new realities of urban China. Years of urbanisation and rising incomes have created a generation of young office workers with the time and money to experiment. "Meth is cheap heroin," says one 29-year-old video producer. "It's very popular among white-collar people." There are more than 2m registered drug users in China (up from about 70,000 in 1989) but the head of China's drugs control bureau says the actual figure is more like 10m. Heroin remains the most popular narcotic, accounting for 60% of registered users, but its take-up by new users is declin- ing. Instead, people are opting for synthetically manufactured drugs, such as k, ecstasy and methamphetamine ("meth"). In 2005 nearly 7% of new registered addicts used synthetic drugs, according to China's National Narcotics Control Commission. By 2013 that had risen to 40%. The spread of the internet has aided sales. Dealers on qq or WeChat, a popular smartphone app, have user names that include the characters "pork" for meth, "rice" for ketamine and "ice" for crystal meth.