Vietnam will prosecute 33 local people for producing heroin from opium at large scale in the country, local newspaper People's Army reported Tuesday.

A 48-year-old man named Trinh Nguyen Thuy and 32 underlings made 48 kg of heroin out of 500 kg of opium in the capital city of Hanoi and its neighboring province of Bac Ninh. They had also traded and transported 576.5 cakes of heroin (nearly 201.8 kg) and 700 kg of opium until Thuy's arrest last August.

They bought hundreds of kilograms of opium in the northern province of Son La for heroin production, purchased a large amount of heroin in Laos, and then resold the drug in Vietnam's northern localities, according to local investigators.

Until his arrest, Thuy was director of a local company and owner of a big farm and several restaurants in Hanoi.

In the first four months of this year, local police dealt with 3,760 drug-related crimes, arresting 5,812 people, and seizing 75 kg of heroin, nearly 37.3 kg of opium, 549 kg of marijuana, and over 15,220 lab-made drug pills, according to the Drug Crime Investigation Department under the Ministry of Public Security.

In Vietnam, trafficking more than 600 grams of heroin is punishable by death or life imprisonment.

The number of drug addicts in Vietnam surged 56.8 percent to 158,428 in 2005 from 101,036 in 2000, according to recent national conference. The Ministry of Public Security has proposed the government give bigger budgets to anti-social evil programs, including development of drug detoxification centers nationwide.

Vietnam, which has targeted to become a drug-free country by 2015, annually spends estimated 320 billion Vietnamese dong (20.1 million U.S. dollars) on detoxification activities.

Source:Xinhua