BEIJING (AP) – Performing arts associations in Beijing have pledged not to hire any actors connected with drugs, state media reported Thursday, after an actor became the latest Chinese celebrity detained in one of China’s sternest crackdowns on illegal drug use in two decades.
Gao Hu, 40, who had a small part as a soldier in Zhang Yimou’s 2011 movie “The Flowers of War,” was detained by police for possession and use of marijuana and methamphetamine, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Beijing police also announced the Tuesday detention in a brief statement.
Several celebrities have been detained on drug charges following a declaration in June by President Xi Jinping that illegal drugs should be wiped out and that offenders would be severely punished.
The Beijing Times reported that 42 Beijing performing arts associations and theater companies signed a pledge Wednesday not to hire any artists that had used drugs to “purify” the performing arts environment. It said the signing was organized by the capital’s Narcotics Control Office and the Beijing Cultural Bureau.
Illegal drug use has ballooned in China in recent decades, after being virtually eradicated following the 1949 communist revolution. Narcotics began to reappear with the loosening of social controls in the late 1980s. In more recent years, rising wealth and greater personal freedoms have been accompanied by a growing popularity of methamphetamines and the party drugs Ecstasy and ketamine. They are often bought on social media forums and consumed in nightclubs, leading to periodic police crackdowns.