MOSCOW, December 11 (Sputnik) – The Supreme People's Court (SPC) in Beijing put more than 84,000 drug criminals behind bars in the period from January to October 2014 amid China's crackdown on drugs, Xinhua said Thursday.
About 27 percent received penalties, ranging from five years in jail to the death sentence, according to the Fifth Criminal Court of the SPC, Xinhua reported.
The court noted that as a part of a concerted effort to fight drug crimes, it had improved the way drug-related cases are investigated and handled, launched an anti-drug education campaign, and vowed that there would be harsher sentences for dealing drugs, particularly producing them.
In June, on the eve of the International Day Against Drug Abuse, China's President Xi Jinping declared a crackdown on drug trafficking. On the same day, the SPC said that there had been an increase in drug trafficking in the country, noting that 39,762 had been convicted for drug crimes between December 2013 and April 2014 alone, indicating a 27.8-percent increase year-on-year. Four people were executed for different drug offenses during the same period.
