The first time Wan Yannan took drugs eight years ago, she was a recent nursing graduate with a coveted job at a hospital — a life that went up in a puff of heroin smoke.
Now a tired-looking 28, Wan lost her boyfriend, her job and was nearly cut off by her family after getting hooked and then suffering repeated relapses despite years of treatment at Chinese rehabilitation centers.
“All I wanted was drugs. The first thing I thought when I woke up each day was getting money for drugs. My life was pitch-dark,” Wan said.
PHOTO: AFP
Now in her fifth stint in rehab in the southwestern city of Kunming, Yunnan Province, Wan is one of many Chinese struggling to kick the habit as drug use rises amid allegations of sub-par and even abusive treatment at state facilities.
Wan’s current home is the Kunming Municipal Compulsory Rehabilitation Center in Yunnan Province — on the front lines of China’s drug scourge as it borders the heroin-producing “Golden Triangle,” where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet.
The 21-year-old center, which claims to be China’s oldest, largest and most modern facility, provided reporters a rare glimpse inside.
Treatment consists of a mixture of Chinese herbal medicines to help addicts detoxify, followed by “purifying” martial arts exercises and “skills training” for future jobs.
The 20 hectare site consists of a living area for its 2,500 addicts with the pleasant name “Harmonious Home,” and vegetable gardens where they grow some of their own food.
Areas where most addicts appeared to be, however, were off-limits, with little explanation. Reporters were unable to witness treatment in action at the police-run center.
One fact is not hidden: the facility’s general failure to prevent relapse.
Xia Jianxun, a police official who serves as the center’s spokesman, said the relapse rate of its addicts — known as “trainees” — was 75 percent. It took two decades for the center to bring that down from 86 percent.
“That was a huge effort,” Xia said, while noting that relapse rates are high worldwide.
Drug use was virtually eliminated after the Communist rise to power in 1949, but the scourge has returned since the country began opening up to the world again three decades ago.
The number of criminal drug cases rose to 77,000 last year, up 26 percent from 2008, according to official figures.
China has 1.3 million registered drug addicts — independent estimates say the actual number is far higher — with more than 170,000 people in rehab centers.
But state media reports have said relapse rates are as high as 90 percent.
In a January report, Human Rights Watch blamed a rehabilitation system it says is marked by sub-standard and even punitive treatment.
Many former addicts interviewed by the New York-based watchdog group said they suffered human rights violations such as forced labor, confinement and other abuses.
“I think the key structural problem is this is a medical issue, a medical problem which has been turned over to the police. They are the institution being asked to make medical decisions,” said Phelim Kine, an Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch. The result is “a spiral in which you can repeat the whole situation again.”
Xia said he knew nothing of those charges, and none of the “trainees” put forward by the Kunming center — all of whom were there “voluntarily” — claimed any such abuses. Center officials monitored every interview.
But the pain of relapse is evident and common.
Yang Likun came back to the center on her own two years after her fourth relapse. Now 34, she looks a decade older after 12 years of heroin abuse.
Trained as a dancer, she hopes to teach dance to children someday, and even marry, but fears leaving the center’s cocoon and risking another backslide.
She said many young Chinese first try drugs out of a fascination with a habit they see as a sign of modern prosperity and decadence, and that not enough is done in China to warn them about the dangers.
“I didn’t know it was addictive and by the time I found that out, it was too late,” she said.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
RSS