RESOVAN IN
REGISTRY M..$1 400013
14
HICK
1x 4 19/3
13
Friday, December 7, 1973
NEW DRUG TREATMENT CENTRE OPENED
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The Director of Social Welfare, Mr. K.W.J. Topley, said today
the government "means business" in tackling the drug problem in Hong Kong.
He said this was borne out by the fact that the government was
now re-organising itself to deal with the drug problem and had a Commissioner
for Narcotics, a senior officer whose sole responsibility was to attack
the problem on all fronts.
The Action Committee Against Narcotics was also being placed on
a new footing.
"The government cannot sweep the drug problem under the rug even
if it wanted to and neither can the Hong Kong community," he said.
Mr. Topley was speaking at the opening ceremony of the Yuen Long
Rehabilitation Centre run by the Hong Kong Discharged Prisoners' Aid
Society. It was built with government assistance.
Housed in the Yuen Long Estate, the Centre provides hostels and
treatment facilities for 24 men and 10 women who will undergo treatment
for three months.
Mr. Topley described the centre as an important part of the
community programme against narcotics.
"No form of human disability is pretty, whether it is blindness,
deafness, the results of cerebral palsy or mental illness or alcoholism.
The results of drug addiction are not very nice either.
/"We would
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