HEALTH
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Council and Urban Services Department, is also a consumer protection activity and has been expanded to meet the most rigid of internationally accepted standards.
Narcotics
Drug abuse is a long-standing problem in Hong Kong with serious social, economic, legal, medical and psychological implications. The government's expressed policy is to stop the illicit trafficking of narcotic drugs into and through Hong Kong, to develop a multi- modality treatment and rehabilitation programme for drug addicts and to dissuade residents, particularly young people, from experimenting with drugs to reduce substantially and eventually to eradicate, drug abuse in the community.
Findings from the government's computerised Central Registry of Drug Abuse and other linked indicators showed that the number of drug addicts in Hong Kong is in the region of 40 000.
Since September, 1976, the registry has received 153 000 reports on 39 000 individual addicts, of which only six per cent were females. Of the 39 000 addicts, 62 per cent were over 30 years of age at the time of their first report, 33 per cent were in the 20-29 age bracket and only five per cent were under 20. Heroin is the principal drug of abuse in Hong Kong and is used by 96 per cent of the addicts reported to the registry in 1981; two per cent took opium and the remaining two per cent were on other drugs. Injection is becoming the most widely-used method of taking heroin - probably because of its high price and scarcity of supply - while opium abusers generally smoke the drug.
The profile of a typical addict in Hong Kong is an adult male over 21, in the lower income group, with not more than six years of formal education, living in over-crowded conditions and generally employed as a casual labourer, or an unskilled or semi-skilled worker. He is single or, if married, usually separated from his family.
The real cost of the government's anti-narcotics programme is about $260 million a year. It consists of four main elements law enforcement, treatment and rehabilitation, preventive education and publicity, and international co-operation. Law enforcement is the responsibility of the Narcotics Bureau and individual district formations of the Royal Hong Kong Police, and the Customs and Excise Service of the Trade Industry and Customs Department. Treatment and rehabilitation are undertaken by the Medical and Health Department, the Prisons Department and a government-subvented voluntary agency, the Society for the Aid and Rehabilitation of Drug Abusers (SARDA). Preventive education and publicity rests mainly with the Narcotics Division of the Government Secretariat, the Information Services Department and various government district offices concerned with community-building efforts. International co-operation is the responsibility of all.
The work undertaken in each of these four areas is inter-related. Effective law enforce- ment action pushes up the price of illicit drugs and reduces their supply in turn, inducing addicts to seek treatment voluntarily.
A wide range of programmes are offered to addicts to suit their individual and varied needs. At the same time, preventive education and publicity efforts persuade others, especially the young, not to experiment with drugs. On the international front, Hong Kong maintains close contacts with other countries and exchanges information and expertise with them.
All of these efforts are co-ordinated by the Action Committee Against Narcotics (ACAN), a non-statutory body comprising a chairman, nine government officials and five unofficial members. Formed in 1965 and reconstituted in 1974, the committee is the government's sole advisory body on all anti-narcotics policies and actions - internal or external – and