Contest aims to reduce teen drug use

XI'AN, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- A national contest to test teenagers' knowledge about drugs concluded Sunday in Xi'an in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

Launched by the Ministry of Education and China National Narcotics Control Commission, the contest started last November and aims to raise public awareness about addiction and reduce teen drug use.

More than 54 million students from 59,000 senior and junior high schools or secondary vocational schools participated in the preliminary online knowledge test, which covers drug types and dangers and national drug control laws.

After several rounds of the contest, 32 teams consisting of 96 contestants attended the finals over the weekend. A team from east China's Shandong Province won.

Ren Huihua, a criminal investigation expert at Southwest University of Political Science and Law, said that the number of synthetic drug users has been growing and the age of drug users is decreasing.

"It's urgent and necessary to improve drug control awareness among teenagers," Ren said.

Statistics show that China launched awareness campaigns about drug prevention for 210 million students in 270,000 schools over the past five years.

Thanks to a string of efforts like the campaigns and contest, 2016 saw a 19-percent drop in drug users under the age of 35 compared with the previous year.

Zheng Meng, a 16-year-old contestant from Heilongjiang Province, studies pre-school education. She hopes to teach her own students about what she has learned in the contest.

"The drug knowledge contest can help the public, teenagers in particular, understand how terrible drugs are and prevent them from falling victim to them," Ren said. Enditem