how big is china?

Field testing in China commences in 15 cities this month. By around the middle of next year, Oraline should be included in the Ministry of Public Security's catalogue of permitted products.

Siyi's manufacturing plant should also be fully operational by then.

SBN's New Jersey plant will have been upgraded to meet the multi-million per annum demand for membranes by SiYi (who will then be on-selling Oraline devices to MPS and perhaps other customers)

Thousands of MPS police around the country should start submitting orders early in the 2nd half.

There's no doubt it will be big. The current market is unbelievably clueless about this - despite the clues being available to those prepared to hunt them out.

An example is a very rare detailed report put out by Human Rights Watch just 5 hours ago.

Entitled "An Unbreakable Cycle", it deals with the AIDS problem in China - but has a lot of revealing information about the MO of the MPS (our major client) and the sheer numbers likely to be involved.

Some interesting figures here. For example 17,000 specialist drug squad police. I imagine they could easily do a thousand tests a year = 17m all up. Also, 243,000 drug arrests in 2004. Would have to have done many more tests to have caught that many. Currently using urine devices - so numbers will go up once they start using Oraline (ie much quicker).

Here are some extracts:

"As evidence of its increasingly pragmatic approach to addressing AIDS, the Chinese government, by the end of 2007, had established 503 methadone clinics in China with the capacity to serve 100,000 drug users.[14] Similarly, needle and syringe exchange programs have been scaled-up..."

Despite these positive steps, however, the Chinese government, via the Ministry of Public Security, continues to implement repressive drug policies that undermine the effectiveness of these new health-based interventions. The Ministry of Public Security, which is responsible for anti-drug squads, and which manages the country's network of compulsory detoxification centers, and the Ministry of Justice, which oversees the county's network of re-education through labor (RTL) centers, pursue policies that drive drug users away from effective prevention and treatment programs.

While general policies, including sentencing guidelines for drug users and officially sanctioned prevention activities, are set on the national level, implementation varies widely between provinces. The national government organizes formal drug campaigns, but provincial and local officials have significant leeway in implementing activities and can promulgate supplemental laws according to their own needs

The tension between strengthened law enforcement and evidence-based public health approaches to drug dependency has been evident even in the statements of high-level government officials.

In June 2004, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited a drug detoxification center and said that drug users "have violated the law, but they are victims themselves."[18]By contrast, just a year later, State Council Member and Minister of Public Security Zhou Yongkang announced a new "national people's war on illicit drugs," with a major goal of increasing the number of people sent to mandatory drug detoxification and re-education through labor centers.[19]

In 2007 the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed a new drug law, which went into effect in June 2008, which substantially restructures the detention system for individuals detained for administrative drug offenses, but has significant ambiguities and uncertainties regarding implementation.[23]

While eliminating the use of RTL centers for the detention of drug users, the law allows up to 6 years of confinement for a single drug offense, with 1 to 3 years in 'compulsory isolation detoxification' (qiangzhi geli jiedusuo), followed by up to three years of 'community rehabilitation'.

"Pilot" community rehabilitation sites have been recently developed on the same sites as RTL and detoxification centers in response to the legislation and appear to be run with few differences from RTL or detox, but promise to provide detainees with paid work and greater opportunities to visit and live with family (including spouses and children).[24]

The legislation also increased police authority to conduct drug searches and a new anti-narcotics campaign initiated in 2007, entitled "Wind and Thunder Sweeping Narcotics," provides monetary incentives to citizens to report drug use by neighbors, relatives, and community members.[25]

Fear of Arrest and Access to Services

China's Public Security system deploys some 17,000 policemen in anti-drug squads. In 2004, the authorities took into custody at least 273,000 drug users.

IDUs say that police frequently detain drug users based upon past contact or for simply resembling a "drug user" and require them to provide a urine sample for drug screening.

Nearly all IDUs interviewed by Human Rights Watch mentioned they were afraid they would be detained and arrested on the way to or from the interview, simply for being in public.

IDUs also report that police wait outside pharmacies and methadone clinics to arrest people when they are trying to buy clean needles.

A government worker explained:

The police are supposed to stay away from the methadone centers but it doesn't always happen that way. Part of the point of methadone centers is that it provides a way to keep control of drug users. From this perspective it is really the law enforcement agencies that are in charge of methadone centers. We try to market people who use methadone centers as "sick people seeking medicine" but the police still see drug users as criminals.[29]


Drug users also cite fear of arrest as a reason for not seeking HIV testing.

One consequence of this policy is that drug users do not seek treatment. An IDU named Chen who did not know his serostatus said: "Sometimes I'm afraid I might be sick with AIDS but I'd rather be sick and free than go to get tested, get arrested, and be sick in detox or RTL."[33]

IDUs also reported that the police routinely use informants to identify IDUs, and provide the informants with a percentage of the fines collected. Drug users say that informants include family members and neighbors. A former detainee named Zhou said:

It's like the police are going fishing, using regular people as bait to catch drug users. We're not hurting anyone but they still go fishing and that makes it even harder to be a normal person in society again. People already discriminate against you, and if your neighbors think they can get money from catching you, they will do it.[36]

Multiple sources, including NGO workers and people who work closely with the local government, said that police are particularly aggressive in detaining drug users in the days preceding June 26, the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. According to IDUs, on this day and other "high profile" days, they could be picked up by police based upon their past record and sent to detoxification, even if they were not currently using drugs, simply as part of efforts to increase the count of "drug users" detained.

Full article at:

http://www.hrw.org/en/node/76256/section/6