Breaking Bad-style basement chemist arrested as meth overtakes heroin as drug of choice for country’s millions of addicts

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A secondary school teacher has been arrested by Chinese police following a six-month investigation into his clandestine methamphetamine empire – the latest case in the country to echo the story of Walter White, the main character in the US TV drama Breaking Bad.

The man, a 35-year-old named only as Lu, had once taught teenagers at a school in the city of Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous Region in south-west China.

But after becoming addicted to drugs and losing his job, Lu transformed himself into a basement chemist producing drugs at home in order to feed his own habit, the People’s Daily newspaper reported.

Photographs published in Chinese state media showed an array of chemicals and glass flasks laid out around the alleged criminal’s flat.

China has witnessed a surge in the use of meth – known in the country as bingdu – in recent years, with the substance overtaking heroin as the drug of choice for millions of addicts.

During a raid in 2013 on a village in Guangdong province nicknamed “China’s number one drug village”, police closed dozens of secret drug labs producing meth and ketamine and confiscated at least three tonnes of drugs worth about £142m.

The village’s Communist party chief, Cai Dongjia, was arrested and accused of being the “drug capo” behind the illegal operation.

In an interview with state media last year, Liu Yuejin, the director of China’s narcotics control bureau, admitted his officers were facing a major crisis. “China is facing a grim task in curbing synthetic drugs, including ‘ice’, which more and more of China’s drug addicts tend to use,” he said.

Liu estimated there were now 14 million drug addicts in China, about half of whom were suspected of using methamphetamine. He claimed meth abuse was costing China 500bn yuan (£51bn) a year. “Addicts will be prone to extreme and violent behaviour, including murder and kidnapping,” he warned.

China’s meth boom has so far spawned at least four homegrown Walter Whites. Before Guangxi unmasked Lu this week, there had been reports of similar figures being put out of business in Hubei, Shaanxi and Guangdong provinces.

North Korea is also thought to boast its own army of disgruntled chemistry teachers channelling synthetic drugs into the rapidly expanding Chinese market.