Chinese towns near to the North Korean border are seeing an explosion in the use of crystal meth. From Newsweek:
Over the past decade and a half, methamphetamine—known colloquially as crystal meth or ice because of its flaky crystals—has flooded Yanji and the wider Jilin province, fueled by an underground economy, border transients, and the general poverty and desperation of the region.
Twenty years ago, Yanji had only 44 registered drug addicts. Last year, the city registered almost 2,100 drug addicts, according to a 2010 Brookings Institution report, with more than 90 percent of them addicted to meth or similar synthetic drugs. Local officials acknowledge that this is very likely a gross undercount and that the actual number may be five or six times higher. “Jilin Province is not only the most important transshipment point for drugs from North Korea into China, but has itself become one of the largest markets in China for amphetamine-type stimulants,” the Brookings report said…..
“Selling ice is the easiest way to make money,” says Shin Dong Hyuk, who was born in a North Korean concentration camp in 1982 and escaped to South Korea in 2005. Every defector, he added, “knows about ice.”
Perhaps because of its alliance with its benighted neighbor, the Chinese government has been extremely careful about pointing its finger at North Korea; reports on drug busts in Jilin province euphemistically refer to the drugs as coming from a “border country.”
“We don’t publicize” the drugs coming from North Korea because it would touch on “the good relationship between China and North Korea,” an official, requesting anonymity, from Jilin’s anti-drug unit says. But he adds, “Of all the drugs we’ve seized this year, it’s mostly been ice, because that’s our main drug here.”
Yet another reason why North Korea is becoming more and more of a liability for the Chinese. Though it'll no doubt be the wretched defectors who pay the price….
Mick Hartley 
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