BEIJING: China’s customs officials will soon be supported by more than 300 sniffer dogs trained to detect drugs, according to a senior official.
Fifty of the hounds will be dispatched to south China’s Guangdong Province to support a monthlong campaign against drug smuggling, said Guang Xiangying, head of drug enforcement with the General Administration of Customs.
The dogs will be used to sniff out narcotics hidden in suitcases, cargo and even inside people’s bodies, he said.
The dogs’ keen sense of smell combined with high-tech devices and tipoffs are expected to find more drugs and deter smugglers, said Yu Jianhuan, an instructor at a dog training base in Shenzhen.
Chinese customs currently has 180 sniffer dogs, most of which are Labradors and Golden Retrievers, he said.
“Sniffer dogs are much more efficient at checking luggage than X-ray machines and people,” he said.
“A trained dog can check a 300-passenger plane in just half an hour.”
Since 2010, sniffer dogs have helped Chinese police in nearly 500 drugs cases, which is about 20 percent of the total in that period, Guang said.
Among other things, the dogs found batches of heroin, cocaine and phenylacetone, a chemical used in the production of drugs, he said.
China’s training facilities for sniffer dogs have gained international recognition.
In 2012, three facilities, in Beijing and Ruili, Yunnan Province, were designated as Asia-Pacific dog training centers by the World Customs Organization, Guang said.
Despite the presumed deterrent of the death penalty for convicted drug smugglers, the illegal trade in narcotics is booming in China.
According to the Office for the China National Narcotics Control Commission, the country had almost 3 million drug users at the end of last year, with 75 percent of them aged under 35.
“The methods of smuggling and concealing drugs evolve all the time and they are hard to detect by machine or by human,” said Wang Zhanyi, one of only two women employed as sniffer dog trainers in China.
“Dogs can find hidden drugs faster and better,” she said.
