China’s drug problems, which officials last year described as severe and deteriorating, have defied government crackdowns due to the increasing types and sources of narcotics on the market, state media said on Tuesday.

The vast majority of Chinese addicts in 2004, nearly 86 percent, were hooked on heroin, but 9.5 percent of drug abusers nationwide were using newer, synthetic drugs, up from just 2.5 percent in 2001, the China Daily said.

“There has been a dramatic rise in the number of abusers of new drugs such as ecstasy and ketamine,” Zhang Xinfeng, vice minister of public security, was quoted as saying at a meeting of the National Narcotics Control Commission yesterday.

Ketamine is an anaesthetic often used in veterinary medicine.

Police nationwide cracked nearly 100,000 cases of drug trafficking, production and sales last year, 4.4 percent more than in 2003, and arrested more suspects, but the number of addicts also grew to 790,000, up 6.8 percent, the newspaper said.

The country is believed to have many more addicts who are not registered.

“China still faces major challenges in the fight against drugs as the forms of drug crimes have become more diversified and covert while the country’s anti-drug forces still lack necessary equipment and knowledge to track them,” Xinhua said.

Traffic of narcotics from neighbouring Afghanistan and the Southeast Asian “Golden Triangle” region, made up of bordering areas of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, was rising, while synthetic drugs like ecstasy and “ice” were being produced in large amounts within China’s borders, the China Daily said.

Seizures of the party drug ecstasy jumped 800 percent in 2004 to three million pills, and 11 tons of heroin, 13.6 percent more than in 2003, were confiscated last year, the paper said.

Last month, a Chinese gang accused of trafficking 12 million tons of methamphetamine, or ice, worth more than $5.5 billion, between 1999 and 2002 went on trial in southern China.

China uses harsh methods to such fight its drug problem, such as forced rehabilitation and death sentences for traffickers and dealers.