President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday reaffirmed the government’s anti-drug campaign at a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) meeting.
“During the [presidential] campaign, anti-drug policy was a topic most likely to elicit responses from the audience, suggesting that many families are faced with a [drug abuse] problem,” DPP spokesperson Juan Chao-hsiung (阮昭雄) quoted Tsai as saying. “It is under such conditions that drug policy has become one of the government’s most important policies.”
Drug abuse is an issue that has to be dealt with by the government as a whole rather than by individual agencies, Juan said.
“What we are faced with is a more tenacious drugs situation and a social environment that gives rise to an increased number of addicts,” Juan said.
Most prisoners now serving time were convicted for drug-related crimes and 70 percent of ex-convicts with drug offenses end up returning to prison, with social factors being most responsible for repeated drug use, the spokesperson quoted Tsai as saying.
Many begin abusing drugs in high school, making educational facilities an important player in the government’s anti-drug campaign, while early prevention and treatment of addiction is critical to rehabilitating addicts, he said.
“Rehabilitation center [inmates] and dropouts [on drugs] are the primary targets we have to treat,” with prisoners convicted for drug-related crimes to be admitted to rehabilitation centers to help them disconnect from an environment of drug abuse and reconnect with society, he said.
The Cabinet has to launch an inter-ministerial, inter-municipal and inter-disciplinary anti-drug campaign and make use of big data technology to identify potential drug users and establish a drug offender tracking system, Juan said.
Also discussed at the party meeting was the establishment of a DPP division to handle issues pertaining to new residents.
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