Drug War Issues
Politics & Advocacy
Vietnam has generally appeared in these pages in recent months because of its penchant for using the death penalty on drug traffickers, but now Vietnamese authorities have taken a step in a different direction, at least when it comes to users. Last Friday, officials in the capital, Ho Chi Minh City, announced that a methadone maintenance program for opiate users will be getting underway there.
In remarks reported by VietnamNet, Ho Chi Minh City Health Department Deputy Director Le Truong Giang announced that the Ho Chi Minh City AIDS Committee will start providing methadone to heroin users beginning next month. The one-year program sponsored by the World Health Organization will operate out of community counseling centers in several districts in the city, Giang said.
The program in Ho Chi Minh City will be the second to operate in Vietnam. For the past year, some 700 drug users in the northern port city of Haiphong have been participating in a pilot program funded by the US and British governments. That program will end at the end of this year.
Giang said that results from methadone maintenance programs in Australia, China, and Indonesia all showed that providing heroin users with access to methadone maintenance therapy would dramatically reduce crime. Methadone is provided for free to users, he added. If the Ho Chi Minh City and Haiphong programs are proven to be effective, they would be expanded, Giang said.
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Comments
COST OF PROGRAM
methadone provided free to users in Viet Nam by US government, when in US I must pay $75/week for it!! Ironic.
Methadone
Anyone that frequents this site probably knows how little I think of the Methadone industry and methadone itself.This is a case of the lesser of two evils.Give me a choice between a bullet in the head and methadone and I'm drinking my juice like a good boy.The whole former golden triangle lost it's mind a long time ago and this is a sign that they may be on the road to recovery.I had a friend that got popped in Thailand many years ago and it was no place to do time.At least they hadn't started wasting people for being sick.Not yet.I still don't get the philosophy that says do my opiate and you can live free but do another opiate and we'll kill you.I just don't get that.But then I have a doctor that gives me morphine but mention dilaudid and he loses it.I don't get that either.Fact is,he's never asked me about my pain or how any thing he does works.He's just glad to get me out of his office.So much for the hippocratic oath.At least I don't have to worry about some government bureaucrat demanding I be shot.I guess bullets cost more than methadone.
Creating Rule For Methadone User
We must create rule for Meth user so that no one can miss use.In our country it use to be miss use a lot and want to make Rule.Please help any idea is appriciated.
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