June 26 is U.N. Anti-Drug Day, and if this year follows the recent trend, China will be marking the run-up with the salutary execution of consumers and/or vendors of chemical compounds disapproved by the state. (Update: Yes indeed it did.)

On June 24, 2008, for instance, Tseng Fu-wen, “a Taiwanese citizen who was convicted of producing or selling methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs,” was put to death in the eastern province of Fujian.

Two accomplices drew a prison sentence and a suspended death sentence (typically commuted to a prison sentence after two years).

Prosecutors said the Taiwanese trio started making drugs in October 2006.

Police arrested them one month later in Xiamen after they bought 50 kilograms of ephedrine to make methamphetamine, commonly known as “ice.”

The police also recovered 63.8 kilograms of ice, plus “varying quantities of other drugs such as heroin, and equipment and raw material in a workshop,” the agency said.

The method of execution does not appear to have been reported by the state media; China uses both lethal injection and gunshot, but I have not been able to document which method prevails in Fujian.

On this day..

• 1958: Raymond John Bailey, for the Sundown Murders
• 1567: Captain William Blackadder, Darnley patsy
• 1931: Xiang Zhongfa, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party
• 1794: Rosalie Filleul, painter
• 1884: Field executions during the Bac Le ambush
• 1718: Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich condemned and fatally knouted
• 1340: Nicholas Behuchet, Battle of Sluys naval commander
• 1890: A quadruple hanging in Jim Crow America
• 1575: The intrepid Torii Suneemon
• 1986: Jerome Bowden
• 1908: Two Persian constitutionalists
• 1953: Dmytro Bilinchuk, Company 67 of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army