Preventing young people from becoming drug addicts would be a priority in HCM City next year, director of the HCM City Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs Department Le Thanh Tam told a recent conference in the city.

Tam told a recent conference on preventing prostitution and drug addiction that this year the number of reported addicts in the city increased 25.16 percent from last year to 2,417.

Of the total, 757 were new addicts who were reported for the first time and 484 had relapsed, he said.

The rest or nearly half of the total came from other provinces and cities nationwide making policing complicated, he added.
Deputy head of the department’s Social Evils Prevention Division Le Van Quy said that only 27 out of 127 spots of prostitution and drug trade in the city were eliminated since the beginning of the year.
The management and support for former addicts reintegrated into society was still weak, with more than 1,600 out of 2,200 detoxificated addicts leaving their localities and not reporting to local authorities.

Nearly 70 percent of rehabilitated addicts were assisted to find jobs with monthly incomes ranging from 800,000 VND to 2 million VND (44-110 USD), yet most of the jobs were unstable.

Local authorities blamed the city’s limited budget for the inadequade support of addicts.

Quy said there wasn’t enough money allocated to projects to help former addicts stabilise their lives or enough subsidies paid to officials to supervise the addicts after rehabilitation./.