Advice from veteran in battle against drugs
Print Edition
TIAN Hao was 16 when he first saw the body of a drug addict.
He had lied about his age to enlist in the army. Walking past a detention center in a military base in Yunnan Province, he saw the body being carried out: shriveled, with no skin on the face, the skull and teeth exposed, the hands and feet the color of dust.
“At that moment, my revulsion for drugs crystallized,” says Tian.
Tian served in the narcotics division of the Armed Police at the border between Yunnan and Myanmar from 2006 to 2010. Four years after leaving the squad, he still recalls the rank smell and twisted faces of the drug addicts.
He is now a commentator on an Internet forum “Zhihu”, where he has more than 70,000 followers. He answers questions such as: “What should I do if my roommate takes drugs?” and “How do the police catch drug smugglers?”
Tian tells stories about drug smuggling investigations without revealing real names and details of the operations or the investigative methods.
“So little information about drugs on the Internet is reliable,” Tian says. “People don’t like to read essays so I started chatting online. When I see comments that I disagree with, I speak out.”
Tian had a rough childhood in a village in Chuzhou City, east China’s Anhui Province. His father drank and beat his mother, and died when Tian was 9.
He thought the military was cool, so joined the army after middle school. Following a year of basic training, when he developed top shooting skills, Tian joined the border narcotics division.
Tian spent three months of training at a border checkpoint in Yunnan, where he witnessed all kinds of drug trafficking.
This included pregnant women who hid drugs internally. These impoverished women from an ethnic minority in Sichuan sometimes gave birth and died while carrying drugs, he recalled.
Offers of bribes were constant. Tian’s monthly salary was 300 yuan (US$48), but the drug dealers offered 6-figure sums in exchange for their freedom.
He understood why the first year of training had been so tough.
“The training not only shaped our bodies, but also our core values,” he says. “We walked a line between good and evil; if not for the strenuous training, we might have succumbed.”
And some did succumb. Tian caught his former survival skills instructor in the mountains trafficking drugs.
“I am not sure what happened to him,” Tian says. “But we found 6 kilograms of heroin on him — I can’t imagine he survived that.”
Off duty Tian would sometimes visit drug addicts’ families. “I never saw a rehabilitated drug addict who could really stay off drugs there,” he says.
The essential condition for rehabilitation is a drug-free environment, which is impossible near the border.
Having left the armed force, Tian now works in part-time jobs and stays with his mother. His fans on “Zhihu” brighten up his life. Publishers have asked him to adapt his comments into a book.
“Drug addicts and drug traffickers have every reason to take drugs,” he says. “I would like to use my story to help people stay away from them.”
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