Court sends 60 suspects in drug cases to prison

Shanghai Railway Transport Intermediate Court has sentenced 60 people to prison over the past year in 53 drug cases, the court announced ahead of Wednesday's International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The court sentenced 35 people to prison terms longer than five years, according to a court press release.

Authorities confiscated more than 5 kilograms of more traditional drugs, such as methylamphetamine and heroin.

They also seized 700 grams of what they called "new synthetic drugs" such as ketamine, adanon and magu, the last of which is a combination of methamphetamine and caffeine.

The court is seeing more cases involving new synthetic drugs, while traditional drug cases are falling off. Cases involving the synthetic drugs increased by 10.6 percent year-on-year, accounting for 11.45 percent of the total number of cases. 

The court has also found that criminals are getting younger. The average age of the 60 prisoners was 37 years old. Criminals born in the 1970s and the 1980s accounted for more than 60 percent of the total. Nearly 30 percent of them have drug criminal records.

The criminals' birth places expanded from the southwestern regions to nationwide. Forty percent of the criminals are from eastern China.