Many Taiwanese favor increasing the penalties for drug-related offenses as a way to deter drug abuse, a survey released by a non-profit organization said on Friday.
In the survey conducted by the Grassroots Influence Foundation, 84.14 percent of respondents said that drug abuse poses a serious social problem, and 75.48 percent said they do not support decriminalization.
To curb drug abuse, 44.61 percent of respondents expressed support for increasing penalties for drug-related offenses, compared with 9.92 percent who said family education should be improved.
On the root causes of drug abuse at schools and in the military, 21.12 percent of respondents linked the problem to family education, 19.68 percent to the social climate and 19 percent to the absence of proper measures by the government.
The survey was conducted from March 14 to April 12 with 1,179 adults participating. It had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The Kaohsiung City Government is planning to set up a specialized agency focused on narcotics as part of its efforts to reduce drug abuse.
Accompanied by Kaohsiung District Chief Prosecutor Chou Chang-chin (周章欽) and prosecutor Wang Chun-li (王俊力), Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) on Friday visited city councilors to seek support for the plan.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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