Tuoi Tre News offers readers a glimpse into the first day of a citywide campaign to send drug addicts to compulsory detoxification centers which took place in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday.

The campaign kicked off at 5:00 am the same day in all 24 districts comprising 332 wards, communes, and towns of the city under the direction of the local People’s Committee.

It is aimed at identifying and sending junkies all over the city to rehabilitation centers, where health and other experts will stop drug addicts' rush on the spot, offer them preliminary detoxification, and provide them with psychological consultancy, pending court orders to officially admit them to compulsory detoxification centers.

By 4:00 pm the same day, competent agencies had detected 1,203 people with signs of drug addiction, 715 of whom were then confirmed to be addicts.

Of them, 643 have no stable residence, according to relevant agencies.

The agencies have also created 437 dossiers to send the addicts to rehabilitation centers.

Meanwhile, 72 addicts with confirmed home addresses have been handed over to their local authorities pursuant to applicable regulations.

Officials and staff at the Binh Trieu Rehabilitation Center in Binh Thanh District had their hands full on Friday performing tasks including providing preliminary checkups and tests to determine levels of addiction.   By 1am on Saturday, 140 junkies, including 24 females have been admitted to the center.

Hua Ngoc Thuan, deputy chairman of the People’s Committee, said sending drug addicts without stable residence to rehabilitation centers is a major task the city is to fulfill before the upcoming Tet (Vietnam’s Lunar New Year) holiday, which begins on February 19, 2015.

The campaign was initiated after the National Assembly adopted a resolution on November 10 to allow junkies to be sent to rehab facilities pending court judgments.

Pursuant to the Law on the Handling of Administrative Violations, which took effect on January 1, 2014, addicts can be sent to a drug detoxification facility only when a court judgment is issued for this purpose and when they fail to stay sober after being monitored for three to six months by local authorities.

The resolution was passed following growing concerns that letting loose addicts may lead to social problems like crimes or robberies as most of them have no jobs and homes.

According to statistics, the city now has about 19,000 drug addicts, of whom 12,000 have unstable residence.

In a report delivered to the National Assembly in late October, Minister of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs Pham Thi Hai Chuyen said the number of drug addicts in Vietnam rises by 7,000 every year, and the figure stood at over 200,000 as of the end of September.