According to a recently released report from Human Rights Watch, China's "first comprehensive law on narcotics control... rountinely incarcerates - without trial or judicial oversite - individuals suspected of drug use for up to seven years in drug detention centers." These centers, meant to replace reeducation-through-labor (RTL) sentences for drug users, are, however, just "as inhumane and as far removed from drug treatment" as the earlier RTL sentences. The "Anti-drug law," passed in June of 2008, requires a minimum sentence of two years, although users may be detained for up to seven.

According to "Wang Xiaoguang, the vice director of Daytop, an American-affiliated drug-treatment residence in Yunnan Province, said the government detox centers were little more than business ventures run by the police." These centers contract detainees out to "chicken farms or shoe factories... drug treatment, counseling and vocational training are almost nonexistent," Wang told the New York Times.

While the name and place of arbitrary detention for drug users has changed, the exploitation and injust nature of the system remains the same. Lawyers and drug experts concur that these new detention centers are just "de facto penal colonies where inmates are sent to factories and farms, fed substandard food and denied basic medical care." Furthermore, prisoner abuse is just as common.

To read the full text of Human Rights Watch's report, click here.