Shanghai
Hooked on "HOT POT"
Restaurants caught using opiate to keep customers coming back
Scores of "hot pot" restaurant operators here face fines and possibly criminal charges after initial checks revealed the rampamt use of opiate ingredients to get customers hooked,health officials said on Monday.
A survey of 45 hot pot establishments by the Shanghai Health Bureau and other departments last week found nearly one-quarter slipped ingredients from poppies into their dishes, a bureau spokesman said.
The substance is not only addictive but damaging to health, he said, which provide the essential ingredient for heroin, opium,morphine.
"Ordinary people have always known about this practice", a hot pot enthusiast surnamed Li said.
"It probably came with hot pot from Sichuan (province)...You notice getting a craving," he added.
Prized in winter, hot pot allows restaurant-goers to cook meat,vegetables and other edibles at their table in boiling pots of seasoned soup.
restaurants offering it in Shanghai have been proliferating in recent years and may now number 500 or more.
The spokesman said joint investigation with police were under way to determine where the operators were aacquiring the opiates.
Offenders will be punished under the Food Hygiene Management Law, he said. Depending on the severity of the situation, they could receive fines, detention or even a criminal conviction carrying a prison sentence.
Poppies are mass cultivated mainly in the golden Triangle area bordering southwestern China in Burma,Thailand and Laos.
source:The Bangkok Post, Feb 5.1999
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