A total of 104,000 drug addicts were sent for detoxification and 25,000 were sent for rehabilitation in local communities in the first half of this year, the national narcotics control authority said Wednesday.

The Office of the Narcotics Control Commission (NCC) made the announcement at a national conference on drug rehabilitation in Guiyang City, Guizhou Province.

China launched a project to promote community drug detoxification and rehabilitation in August 2015.

The project has focused on setting up local institutions and recruiting volunteers. A total of 81,000 staff and volunteers are now working for community-based rehab programs, the authority said.

Thanks to the program, 753,000 drug users were receiving or had finished rehabilitation as of the end of June, a year-on-year increase of 58,000 people, said Hu Minglang, deputy head of the office of the NCC and head of the Bureau for Narcotics Control of the Ministry of Public Security.

Chinese authorities have registered over 2.3 million drug users, according to the country's narcotics control authority, with 448,000 addicts registered in the first half of 2016.

About 1.3 million former drug users were reported to be completely clean for more than three years in the first half of this year, an increase of 214,000 people from the same period last year.

China will promote successful practices to develop community drug detoxification and rehabilitation, said Hu.

Source : XINHUA