A New Power Party (NPP) employee was caught in possession of LSD, a class-two drug, Taoyuan City Councilor Wang Hao-yu (王浩宇) of the Green Party Taiwan said yesterday, accusing the party of setting a bad example for young people.
Police on March 27 found a large amount of LSD at the NPP employee’s house in Taipei’s Zhongzheng District (中正), Wang said on Facebook.
LSD is a class-two drug that can cause hallucinations and seizures, and in large doses can be deadly, he said, adding that the NPP denied the incident and even ordered employees to help hide the information from the public.
Wang said he supports the NPP’s objective of “decriminalizing drugs,” but the party has set a negative example for young people.
“As an idol of the younger generation, NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) should not tolerate possession of drugs,” he said, adding that the incident has tarnished the image of the party.
Huang should fire the employee immediately and investigate whether other employees were involved in the case, Wang said, adding that he should also apologize to the public and clarify the party’s stance on fighting drug abuse.
In a report published yesterday, the Chinese-language Mirror Media magazine said that the employee is a close friend of NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) and has served as his personal assistant at the party’s Taipei chapter.
Lim yesterday said the drugs were found at the office of another group and the employee has been tested negative for drugs.
The employee has been placed on administrative leave while the office investigates the matter, he said, adding that the party cannot answer questions related to the case.
“The party has always maintained zero tolerance of drugs and never advocated the decriminalization of drugs,” he said, adding that the party is confused about Wang’s continued attempts to slander and spread rumors about the matter.
The employee was not his personal assistant and they never played in bands, Lim said.
Police later revealed the arrested employee was a 36-year-old man surnamed Lin (林).
Lin is suspected of having purchased 4kg of LSD and more than 20kg of magic mushrooms on the Internet, police said, adding that a sniffer dog detected the drugs in a parcel addressed to his house that was mailed to Taiwan from abroad.
Police on March 27 raided the address on Taipei’s Zhongxiao W Road, which is Lin’s house, and arrested him for possession of drugs, the police said.
Following the police statement, NPP headquarters said in a statement that the party would fire any employee or member charged with drug-related crimes.
The party leadership has requested a report on the matter from its Taipei chapter, the statement said.
Additional reporting by Wang Kuan-ren
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching