Vietnam police search for addicts
HANOI - Police searched Saturday for 101 drug addicts still at large from a group of 369 who escaped
from a drug rehabilitation center in southern Vietnam.
The escape on Thursday was the third mass breakout from the same drug rehabilitation center in less than seven
months.
It was triggered by the government's decision to extend the time drug addicts must stay in mandatory rehabilitation
programs to at least one year, up from the previous three months, said an official at the center who spoke on condition
of anonymity.
Inmates in one room broke through a door and then used stones and tree trunks to force open the doors of most of the
other 26 rooms at the center in Can Tho, 125 miles south of Ho Chi Minh City.
Police, guards and villagers captured 160 of the inmates later in the day and 108 others on Friday, the official said.
Vietnam's government plans to send all of the country's 112,000 known drug addicts through rehabilitation programs
by the end of 2005, despite their high failure rate. Officials say the average relapse rate is more than 90 percent.
The government has set a target of bringing down the average relapse rate to about 60 percent by the end of 2005.
The Associated Press - June 09, 2002.
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