War without an end
After conceding that drug use and trafficking is raging in the city the Macau government has ramped up its anti-drug campaign, but it appears to be fighting a losing battle.
FIRST, a quick tour of the drug-addicted side of your city. Please proceed to the north of Macau into the heart of the city’s hard-drug culture. There, huddled in Triangle Garden are a handful of addicts gathering for their afternoon heroin hit. The paraphernalia of injecting drug users - syringes and spoons - placed on the ground.
Do a u-turn and proceed back to the harbour. Each morning, afternoon and night, at the Macau Ferry Terminal, tens-of-thousands of people pour into the city with minimal border security. Notice the young guy looking a little nervous as he passes by customs officers.
Next stop: the Macau border gate. Every weekend hundreds of youths can be seen making the trip to discos and karaoke bars in Zhuhai. These clubs provide a haven for thousands of addicts and social users who gather to take so-called party drugs.
Finally a detour into your imagination. Picture an anonymous room tucked away discreetly in the city. It is dimly-lit and clean, with a group of young people sitting around a coffee table. They are handing around pills and cutting lines of white powder on the table with loud music playing in the background.
It’s now or never, says the head of the Social Welfare Bureau’s (IAS) Department for Prevention and Treatment of Drug Dependence, Celeste Vong. Macau has a drug problem and is facing a critical fork in the road. Ms Vong says the government is fully aware of the situation and is acting now to do something about it. “Macau has always been a blessed place, we are a small city and we could proudly say the drug problem was not as bad as it was in Hong Kong or the mainland,” Ms Vong says. “Until now we could say that, but the situation in Macau is now so complicated and is becoming more difficult to tackle. The economical development has brought with it more and more social problems and drugs are definitely one of them.”
A report issued by Ms Vong’s department last year, Report on Drug Control in Macao 2006, describes the situation as out of control. “The abuse and trafficking of psychotropic substances is raging in Macau,” it reads. “In addition, HIV/AIDS infections by syringe sharing increased dramatically, trans-regional drug trafficking and taking by youngsters is much more severe than before.” The 2007 version of the annual report is due out in the next few months with similar results expected. Ms Vong says the city’s rapid economic expansion has been a double-edged sword and has opened the drug market in Macau like never before. According to the Judicial Police, Macau is widely recognised as a transit point for international drug traffickers. “The city is very open; we have a lot of doors to other places. The international airport and the border gates, we have so many people coming into Macau,” Ms Vong explains. “The number of people coming in is a nightmare for us, there is more and more entertainment with the casinos and the problem of people taking drugs is increasing. There is no doubt the drug market has enlarged.”
According to information from the only government-run drug treatment centre in Macau, a child under the age of fourteen was admitted for treatment earlier this year. It is not uncommon; the president of the Association for the Rehabilitation of Drug Abusers of Macau (ARTM), Augusto Nogueira, confirms a 14-year-old boy underwent treatment for heroin addiction at the Coloane-based non-government facility last year. The majority of people who seek treatment for drug abuse in Macau do so for heroin addiction. This is primarily due to the fact treatment is voluntary and the majority of people who use party drugs do not believe they have a problem.
Despite dealing primarily with heroin addicts, Mr Nogueira is particularly concerned about the growing use in Macau of the veterinary anesthetic ketamine. “There have not been so many studies done in Macau, but if you look at the arrests and people who ask for help, there is stability in the heroin numbers,” he says. “Our big concern at the moment is the increase in ketamine use among the youngsters. This is a major concern as it does huge damage to the brain. We are trying to do our best in schools to educate young people, but we really need to try and understand why this is happening and what they are looking for in this kind of consumption.” Ketamine, also known as Little K or Special K, was originally created for use as a human anesthetic and is still used in some cases for children and ill people. It usually comes in liquid form and is cooked into a powder by drug users for snorting. Taken in high doses the drug gives a hallucinogenic effect with users feeling far away from their bodies. It can cause neurosis and other brain disorders.
As part of their research into Macau’s drug culture, an outreach team from ARTM travelled to Zhuhai last year to visit some of the discos and karaoke bars frequented by Macau youths. ARTM’s psychological counselor William Lo describes what he saw as “shocking”. Mr Lo says some of the youths were “very young” and many were from Macau. “I would be guessing some were 12 to 13-years-old,” Mr Lo says. “We saw people dealing and saw people mixing ice [crystal meth] with alcohol in the bar area. To have fun they think they need to be on drugs.”
Mr Nogueira goes on to explain the scene. “The music was really loud and the dance floors were packed with people but nobody was dancing, there were all these young people on the stage and they were all just static. They were standing there in one pose, some for ten minutes or more, and others were passed out,” he says. “Ketamine gives the effect of being removed from the body and the lights and sound heighten the experience. There are places in Macau that are the same with the dealing and everything, but people are not so open about it.”
Ms Vong agrees that young people taking drugs for fun, is the biggest concern in Macau. She says peer pressure is a major problem and drug-use trends from Hong Kong and the mainland are quickly adopted here. “Especially this year the police have arrested many young people on drug charges,” she says. “Under Macau law at the moment if you can’t prove you are the user and you are caught with more than three days worth of a drug, you are trafficking and that is a very serious jail sentence.”
According to reports in the Macau Daily Times three youths, aged 16, 17 and 25, were arrested for trafficking ketamine in Macau in May and were remanded in custody. A week later two local teenagers were allegedly caught on the same night selling ketamine and tranquilisers. The report said one suspect, aged 18, admitted he bought 35 bags of ketamine and 20 tranquiliser pills in the mainland for 1500 patacas. According to police each bag of ketamine could be sold in Macau for between 300 and 500 patacas and the pills for 50 patacas each. The pair was charged with trafficking and face lengthy jail terms if convicted.
YMCA senior program secretary Eric Cheuk confirms most drugs can be sold in Macau for twice what they are bought for in Zhuhai. Mr Cheuk explains that youths travel to the mainland to use drugs because they are cheaper and there is less chance of being caught. “They will try it for the first time in the mainland and they may later try it again in Macau,” he says. “In China it is far easier for youths to get into discos and these sort of places, you see them at age 12 and 14, that does not happen in Macau. There is less control of these types of places in Zhuhai.”
John has been dealing drugs in Macau for the past three years and always gets his supply from Zhuhai. The 23-year-old does not see it as a major issue and says it is easy to do two trips a week that earn him 6000 patacas. “I just go over there and then package it up into smaller qualities and sell it to my friends,” he explains. “I work a few days a week in a restaurant and the rest of my money I make selling drugs, it is no big deal. I sell only to people I know and trust, I would never go out onto the street trying to sell and it is not big quantities.” A university student, John says drug use is rampant in Macau and he is never short of customers. A “social user” himself, he is aware that if caught trafficking by police he could face years in jail. “At first I think I was really scared, but I have done it so many times now it just seems like routine,” he says. “I had a friend who did it and he put me onto a guy, now people expect it of me, if I don’t have any then they get annoyed and I aim to please.”
In the face of growing public concern, the Macau government is ramping up its anti-drug campaign. It announced last month the establishment of a new committee to fight drug-related crimes. Modeled on similar committees run by the United Nations and in Hong Kong, its job will be to coordinate parties working in the drug field and provide information regarding to drug policy. The government is also proposing new drug laws that were unveiled in the Legislative Assembly late last month. Secretary for administration and justice, Florinda da Rosa Silva Chan, spent several hours presenting the bill and lawmakers will meet again on July 8 to vote on its overall draft. It proposes tougher sentences for drug traffickers and narcotic manufacturers. The maximum sentence for producing heroine, methadone, opium, cocaine and amphetamines will increase from 12 to 15 years. The minimum jail term for trafficking will increase from three to five years. The government seems to agree that the current law, adopted 17 years ago, is outdated and not tough enough.
“The new drug law will be even more strict, if young people take drugs for fun they could pay for it for the rest of their lives,” says Ms Vong. “At the moment if you are caught with less than three days worth of a substance, most times you just need to pay a fine. Many people pay the fine and then go on taking drugs. Under the new law, more treatment will be encouraged. We are hoping the new law can keep the balance a bit better and encourage users to face their problems. We do not want to take people’s freedom or give them time in jail, we want people to take treatment as part of a condition of sentence. In terms of trafficking we are sorry if it ruins young people’s lives, but it is a very serious offence and results in a lengthy jail sentence.”
Speaking in the legislative assembly Ms. Chan said the proposed bill “aims to lower the number of drug related crimes, at the same time as encourage treatment”. “We think it’s important to toughen such criminal activities, we are also aware of how much an addict needs help to get clean and reintegrate himself back in society,” she said. Under the new bill people caught on drug crimes will have the chance to avoid jail by accepting treatment and doing community work.
But not everyone agrees that tougher laws are needed. Mr Nogueira strongly believes there needs to be special consideration given to young people who “make a mistake”. “They buy some drugs and they think it is fun, they do it with an adventure feeling and then they could be facing 15 years in jail, this is very heavy,” he says. “Some are students, their lives are damaged forever. I agree they need to be punished, but we also need to think of their futures. When you are talking about organized crime and drugs; that is a completely different story. I believe we need a law that avoids being so severe to the local youngsters.”
Mr Cheuk agrees that giving young offenders a second chance is only fair.
“In my opinion youths can change, so we should always give them a second and sometimes a third chance,” he says. “Most of the time they are not making decisions by themselves, they are influenced by peers or may have a bad family situation and this needs to be taken into account.”
According to the Judicial Police in the past two years heroin, cannabis, ecstasy, ketamine and ice were the major drugs seized in Macau. In 2006 there were 152 people arrested for drug-related crimes, 69 were charged with trafficking, 78 charged with consumption and 6 charged with other offences. Of them, 28 were aged between 16 and 21, 122 were older than 21 and two were under the age of 16. There were 120 males and 32 females arrested. Eighty-four were from Macau, 42 from Vietnam, eight from HK, seven from the mainland and a handful of others from other countries.
In 2006 there were 519 drug abusers registered for treatment in Macau, including 470 voluntarily and 49 drug addict prisoners. Heroin was the major problem, followed by psychotropic drugs. In 2004, 18 people were infected with HIV from sharing needles in Macau, in 2005 there were 10 and in 2006 eight. Needle exchange programs are illegal in Macau.
A survey carried out in Macau Prison found of the 49 drug addicted prisoners in 2006, 80 per cent were heroin users, 15 per cent used ecstasy, ketamine or cannabis and five per cent were addicted to morphine. The majority, or 35 per cent, of prisoners said they used drugs to reduce pressure, pain, sense of frustration or depression, 20 per cent did it to avoid withdrawal, 15 per cent due to curiosity and 20 per cent was unknown.
Ms Vong says under the current environment with drug use escalating, there was no choice but to discuss the issue of involuntary treatment. “Heroin is still the thing that the most people seek treatment for in Macau, but we only have voluntary treatment, not compulsory,” she says. “In the past five years there are more and more people taking party drugs, they take drugs for fun and do not feel they are addicted. For them to seek treatment they usually have to be found out by families, teachers or be arrested by the police. Motivation is low to get treatment and that is something we need to address. Many people say we should have compulsory treatment and I agree we need to consider it, now we have the committee we can discuss this very serious topic. Overall I see the committee as a way to move forward in Macau and I believe we can control this problem of increasing drug use.”
“Macau has always been a blessed place, we are a small city and we could proudly say the drug problem was not as bad as it was in Hong Kong or the mainland. But the economical development has brought with it more and more social problems and drugs are definitely one of them.”
“The number of people coming in is a nightmare for us, there is more and more entertainment with the casinos and the problem of people taking drugs is increasing.”
“Our big concern at the moment is the increase in ketamine use among the youngsters. This is a major concern as it does huge damage to the brain.”
“In China it is far easier for youths to get into discos and these sort of places, you see them at age 12 and 14.”
“At first I think I was really scared, but I have done it (drug trafficking) so many times now it just seems like routine. I had a friend who did it and he put me onto a guy, now people expect it of me, if I don’t have any then they get annoyed and I aim to please.”
“We are hoping the new law can keep the balance a bit better and encourage users to face their problems. We do not want to take people’s freedom or give them time in jail, we want people to take treatment as part of a condition of sentence. In terms of trafficking we are sorry if it ruins young people’s lives, but it is a very serious offence and results in a lengthy jail sentence.”
“Some are students, their lives are damaged forever. I agree they need to be punished, but we also need to think of their futures. When you are talking about organized crime and drugs; that is a completely different story. I believe we need a law that avoids being so severe to the local youngsters.”