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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 six 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 and external - and whether related to government departments or to voluntary agencies. ACAN is served by the Narcotics Division, which is headed by the Commissioner for Narcotics.
Sustained and co-ordinated efforts in the four major anti-narcotics strategies continued in 1982. However, the price of heroin in the illicit market dropped considerably during the year, compared with the situation in 1981 when a reversal of the positive trends since 1974 occurred, indicating that the supply of heroin had become more plentiful as a result of two bumper opium crops in the 'Golden Triangle' in 1981 and 1982. In law enforcement, the police and customs continued to apply increased pressure on traffickers at all levels. This resulted in an increase in detections of both serious and minor drug offences, rising from 2 000 and 6 728 in 1981 to 2 370 and 7 900 in 1982, and more drugs were seized in 1982 than in the previous year.
In the field of treatment and rehabilitation, 1982 was a busy year. Despite a considerable fall-off in street prices of heroin, large numbers of addicts continued to seek, and remain in, treatment voluntarily.
The Narcotics and Drug Administration Division of the Medical and Health Department operates 23 methadone treatment centres, each providing maintenance and detoxification services to addicts. Methadone maintenance is a long-term treatment approach which is intended to prevent an addict's return to illicit heroin or other narcotic abuse, while detoxification is a short-term form of treatment aimed at eliminating the physical dependence on narcotics.
As the methadone treatment programme has proved to be extremely effective in serving both addicts and the community, two new evening methadone clinics were opened in Sha Tin and Yuen Long in January. Following this, in June a new centre was opened in Hung Hom.
SARDA runs two voluntary in-patient treatment centres - one for men and the other for women. The male centre, on the outlying island of Shek Kwu Chau, has a capacity for 500 patients, while the Women Treatment Centre, in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island, can cater for 30 patients. Linked with these two centres are six regional after-care centres, three units for the intake of patients and three hostels. During 1982, 2 400 patients, including 230 women, were admitted to SARDA's two centres.
Under these two voluntary treatment programmes and the Correctional Services Department's compulsory placement programme, 12 880 addicts and ex-addicts are now receiving some form of treatment, rehabilitation and after-care every day. This represents an increase of 45 per cent compared with the situation seven years ago. Although there was an increase in the number of young people involved in drug addiction or trafficking activities in 1982, only six per cent of the known addicts were under 20 whilst over 60 per cent were over 30. Addicts under 21 in the Correctional Services Department's drug addiction treatment centres decreased from 25 per cent in 1969 to 11 per cent in 1982; at SARDA's Shek Kwu Chau voluntary in-patient treatment centre addicts under 21 also decreased from 16 per cent to five per cent in the same period.