Ho Chi Minh City is going to pilot another rehabilitation program for drug addicts with a new medication, local authorities said. Hua Ngoc Thuan, vice chairman of the municipal People’s Committee, talked about the program at a conference held in the city on Wednesday to review the outcome of a campaign, launched in December last year, to gather and send junkies to obligatory drug detoxification centers. Based on the campaign’s results, the city will pilot a program to use a new medication, Cedemex, for stopping drug addicts’ rush on the spot, both at home and in the centers, Thuan said. The city has selected many locations in District 1 and District 8 for the pilot program using Cedemex, the vice chairman said.  In addition, the current use of Methadone in the drug detoxification process will also be expanded, he added. Tieu Thi Thu Van, chief of the secretariat of the People’s Committee, said drug addicts who drink Methadone have become meeker than those who do not take the medicine. Nearly 3,000 drug addicts have been using Methadone and 80 percent of them have been given jobs, Van said, adding that the city has set up 13 points for junkies to take this medication.      Ho Chi Minh City now has about 19,000 drug addicts, of whom 12,000 have an unstable residence, according to statistics. Under the above campaign, the city detected and tested more than 11,000 drug addicts and sent 2,333 of them, who had no stable residence, to compulsory drug detox centers in the first six months of this year, authorities reported. These addicts were brought to such centers based on warrants that had been issued after relevant courts considered the addicts’ records, which were transmitted to them by competent agencies. 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.

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