In the past six months, Beijing railway police have caught 126 drug addicts, almost double that from the same period last year, police said.

The number of drug addicts in Beijing has maintained an average annual growth rate of 11 percent for the past five years — just a little behind the nation's 15 percent growth rate, said Yi Yang, deputy captain of the narcotics corps of the Beijing public security bureau.

The latest figure went beyond 25,800 this year, while the country has more than 2.58 million on the record, Yi told China Daily.

Liu Yuejin, director of the narcotics control bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, told China Daily earlier this week, "Where there is one drug addict on the record, there are at least four at large."

Pang Helei, a spokesperson for the railway police, released the latest figures amid a joint anti-drug campaign with the narcotics corps of Beijing public security bureau at the Beijing South Railway Station on June 26, the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

"You see, this is what Ecstasy looks like. And that is the famous 'ice,'" explained an anti-drug officer to a father holding a 3-year-old girl in his arms.

Man-made samples of 13 drugs, from opium and heroin to the more-obscure methaqualone and triazolam, were displayed in a small rectangular wooden box to passengers.

The officer said the samples were exactly the same as real drugs, except that they were harmless.

"I would never touch drugs, whether I saw the samples or not," said the father, surnamed Li, in a rush to catch a train. "But it helps to see what they look like."

By June 24, the capital's railway police, with extended bureaus in Shandong, Shanxi, Hebei and Henan provinces and Tianjin municipality, have captured 22 alleged drug dealers, with 84.29 grams of various drugs confiscated, according to the official report.

During an inspection this week of the local anti-drug campaigns in Beijing, Guo Shengkun, head of the Ministry of Public Security who chairs the National Narcotics Control Commission, urged a "people's war" on drugs to join all social forces, including volunteers and social workers, to stop the spread of drugs.

Li Wenjun, a professor specializing in drug research at Chinese People's Public Security University, said: "The Ministry of Public Security is pretty good at cracking down on drug-related crimes. That does reduce the supply of drugs.

"But when it comes to controlling the market's need for drugs, the core in narcotics control, it's way beyond the ministry's capability. We need all of society to fight drugs."