Shanghai police caught over 600 drug suspects in over 500 cases in the first five months of this year, with 22.6 kilograms of drugs seized, they said on Tuesday.

The announcement came ahead of the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Friday.

Their tally for last year was more than 2,400 suspects in over 1,700 cases and over 170 kilograms of drugs seized.

The number of drug takers in Shanghai fell 11.5 percent last year compared with 2018, and 41.7 percent of all suspects in drug cases caught in 2019 were between 18 and 35 years old, according to the police, who said younger drug takers accounted for an increasingly larger percentage.

This year, 38.7 percent of all drug takers caught were taking drugs for the first time, police said.

Methaccounted for 48.1 percent of all the drugs seized by the police last year, while other drugs included cocaine, marijuana, flunitrazepam, tryptamines, ritalin,modafinilandalprazolam.

Drug traffic

Of all the drugs seized in Shanghai last year, 91 percent came from other parts of China, and 9 percent from beyond the Chinese mainland, police said.

In one case last year, police caught 10 suspects alleged to have transported methinto China from foreign countries which ended up being sold in Shanghai.

Police found that the drugs seized in one case in Songjiang District came from the central Chinese province of Hunan and the border areas of the southwest province ofYunnan.

The suspects were rounded up in December last year with about 47 kilograms ofmethtablets and 2 kilograms ofmethseized along with over 900,000 yuan (US$130,000) in cash.

Eight suspects were arrested and two placed under restrictive measures, police said.

In another case, police caught seven suspects in August last year said to have used Shanghai as a transfer point formethoriginating from Southeast Asia to be sent to other countries. A total of 5.6 kilograms ofmethwas seized in this case.

Earlier this month, police announced that they had caught 145 suspects in a case in which some foreign nationals were found to be transporting and selling drugs in Shanghai. The major suspects were caught earlier last year.