How do the Chinese treat substance abuse issues? As a counselor for both in-class and online drug classes I was asked this question by a student in an 8-hour MIP class. This will be the first in a series of blogs that looks at the way China deals with substance abuse issues and drug users.
Drug use in any context carries risks, but users in China face a unique set of challenges. First offenders are immediately taken to a detention center. As reported in www.theatlantic.com.
Police often pick people up off the streets and take them immediately into custody, keeping them in "treatment" for years at a time. Although it's difficult to track down standard practices -- many of the centers allow neither rights monitors nor press -- it's believed that these programs offer no clinical care and don't conduct patient evaluations.
So what do these people do who are picked up by Chinese authorities for drug use? Remember, they do not give them counseling. Chinese response is not rehabilitation.
All drug detention is, is work. “Patients” get up at five in the morning to make shoes, working all day and into the night. But what about the “detox center” that users are mandated to? The detox center is a factory. Again, detox “patients” work every day, until late in the night, regardless of their health. Sounds like a Nazi death camp.
The Chinese have long been known for barbarism and their treatment of substance abuse issues is just that. It is shameful they do not try to rehabilitate their sick and addicted. Given that users go to labor camps, I wonder, of those who survive the labor camps, how many go back to drug use and wind up a “patient” in a detox center a second time. We will look at this issue in a future entry.