Drug Rehab in China
Fu Lixin, emotionally exhausted from caring for her sick mother, needed a little pick-me-up. A friend offered her a “special cigarette” — one laced with methamphetamine – and Ms. Fu happily inhaled.
From left, Han Wei and Fu Li Xin, both recovering drug addicts, and Zhang Wenjun, who runs Guiding Star, an organization that helps recovering addicts, in Beijing.
Yu Jingtao is a social worker whose organization, Beijing Harm Reduction Group, distributes 30,000 clean needles a month.
The next day, three policemen showed up at her door.
“They asked me to urinate in a cup,” she said. “My friend had been arrested and turned me in. It was a drug test. I failed on the spot.”
Although she said it was her first time smoking meth, Ms. Fu, 41, was promptly sent to one of China’s compulsory drug rehabilitation centers. The minimum stay is two years, and life is an unremitting gantlet of physical abuse and forced labor without any drug treatment, according to former inmates and substance abuse professionals. Read more…
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