A conference was held in Hanoi on March 31 by the National Committee for AIDS, Drugs and Prostitution Prevention and Control to review five-years of implementing the drug control plan.

Over the past five years, the police in coordination with border guards and customs officers have arrested nearly 60,000 drug-related cases and 91,000 drug-related offenders, seized nearly 1 tonnes of heroin and more than 17 tonnes of cannabis.

The police have also worked closely with the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs to implement detoxification models efficiently with 250,000 people having been rehabilitated. In addition, 15,000 people have been provided with loans and new jobs.

Remarkable progress has been made in international cooperation, and dissemination of information about drug control. However, drug trafficking and other drug-related activities have spread widely as drug users have been reported in more than 90 percent of districts and townships, and nearly 60 percent of communes and wards.

Deputy Minister of Public Security, Le The Tiem said it is essential to create a plan to come up with the national strategy for drug control in Vietnam until 2020 with a vision to 2030, and implement the Political Bureau’s resolution No 21 on drug control in the new situation.

In his speech, Deputy PM Truong Vinh Trong praised ministries, sectors and localities’ combined efforts to prevent and control drugs and prostitution over the year while asking them to build their own plans to implement the national strategy for drug control in Vietnam until 2020 with a vision to 2030.

It is necessary to launch annual campaigns for drug control, deal with trafficking rings and increase the efficiency of detoxification and post-detoxification management of drug addicts, Mr Trong stressed.

(VOV)