ARTM interviewed Dr. Celeste Vong Yim, Chief of the Department of prevention and Treatment of Drug abuse, on the 13th of January. This was the first from many others, working individuals in the drug abuse field, whom we will make for our interviews. Our sincere thanks go to Dr.Celeste Vong yim Mui for her kind availability for this initiative.

ARTM: To one person be admited in the dptt clinique what need to do ? what are the procedures? To whom they should contact?

Dra. Celeste: The Integrated Detoxification service center, under the management of D.P.T.T., has equipped the safety, hygienic, and medicinal environment with advanced devices. Our professional detoxification team includes Social Workers, Psychologists, nurses and doctors to provide a multi-dimension, voluntary detoxification and rehabilitation service.

Our main devices have outpatient center, primary treatment department and multi-functional rooms. Those who need these services can come to the out patient center (Estrada Nova, Macao) or phone to the Detoxification hotline (781662). This hotline can immediately provide counseling and other services. All these services are free of charge.

ARTM: How long take the treatment? After end of the treatment what you advice them?

Dra. Celeste: For the new cases, the outpatient center will, as best as possible, provide a social worker to have a meeting with that person on the same day. After the social worker evaluates the case, a treatment plan will be set out for this client. This plan will start at around five working days after the initial meeting. During these five days, there will be medical diagnosis, body checks, nursing, counseling, social support service, etc.

Based on the situation of the case, our team will advice the client to be admitted to the primary treatment department to receive a short-term residential detoxification, proceeded with outpatient follow-up or be transferred to a suitable rehabilitation center. Detoxification and rehabilitation is a very long process. In some cases the individual needs follow up for more than 5 years.

The detoxification and medical treatment normally takes around 14 to 21 days and the treatment for the rehabilitation and re-integration into society needs many times afterwards. The social follow up treatment takes more than half a year. Beside this, outpatient community treatment scheme will be provided and the normal plan is set for one year.

It divides to short term, medium term and long term plan. Because detoxification is voluntary, so many situations will be happened. For examples, some cases will leave in the middle, some will repeat to ask for help and/or some will keep contacting and follows up for few years. So the plan is flexible.

ARTM: If some parents find that their son is taking drugs, what they should do? To whom they can contact?

Dra. Celeste: If the parent finds out their son/daughter have a drug problem, first they need be calm to face the problem. Care and patience to understand their son/daughter’s drug abuse situation and what they think. Then solve the problem together and ask for professional help. For anti-drug counseling hotline call 781791 or directly phone to 781662 (detoxification service hotline). Our staff will give assistance to the parent and their son/daughter.

ARTM: What is the general situation of the drugs comsuption in Macau?

Dra. Celeste: From an overall perspective, compare with other countries, Macao’s drug problem is not serious. But we need to pay attention about the type of drugs and the substance type around these few years. For examples are the psychoactive drugs abuse and travelling to the mainland to take drugs. We can not give tolerance to drug usage and selling of drugs. The regional fight and cooperation against drugs are improving and needs to be continued.

ARTM: Lately we see some arrests of Ice, Ecstacy e Ketamine in possesion of young students. Do you think thaat the youngsters have knowledge of the dangers that this drugs are?

Dra. Celeste: Recently, there were youth drug dealing situations appearing. Our department is deeply concerned about this case. We believe that most youngsters in Macao are good and have knowledge about drugs and that drug crimes are serious. For the above situation these were youngsters who were tempted or forced by the bad peers or maybe did not care about the risks that they would face.

ARTM: What are the dangers of this drugs?

Dra. Celeste: For the harmful effects of ICE, Ketamine & MDMA, etc. refer to the information ARTM web guide on drugs information.

ARTM: The clinique of the dptt are available to help this new generation of substance abuse?

Dra. Celeste: By fact and from our working experiences, normally drug addicts are only serious about asking for help after 5 to 10 years. So our cases are in an average of around 30 years old. Abusers under the age of 18 years old are few.

As for the new generation psychoactive abusers, they are more passive and more delayed in the awareness of how drugs destroy themselves. One of the goal for social worker department is to run the “Integrative detoxification service center” to empower the detoxification treatment for those new generation drugs and handle the increasing psychoactive drug abusers in the future.

ARTM: What kind of prevention that dptt do to alert the youngsters about the danger of drugs?

Dra. Celeste: Prevention job should be targeted to different populaces and choose different methods in order to give out effectiveness. For the youth drug abuse prevention work, our department always ran an active, positive and dynamic prevention education. Beside this, we let the youth know about the harm of drugs. We also empower the skill for the youth against drugs, how to refuse the negatives, to make wise choice and grow and live in a healthy manner. Recently our department extended the prevention work network. For example, to target the children, we provided a “health-life education course” for the objective of youth smoking problems. We will also provide “multi-view on smoking courses”, “anti-drug theater” and “youth anti-drug activities”, etc shortly. Those are our new prevention planning.

ARTM: The youth criminal is increasing, for several times we see some arrests of young students in possesion of drugs for comsunption or traffic. What you think that is failed in the society, family and schools?

Dra. Celeste: Juvenile criminals really make us feel worried. But we can not put all the causation on the dysfunction of the society, family, school or government. There are many factors to leads out these cases. For example the traffic access is increasing (consumption in mainland), information technology development (internet), etc. which brings the negative effect.

In my opinion, family is the most important support for the individual and schools are the education foundation for youth to grow. The development and structure transmitted in the modern society are very dynamic. However, the lives and work pressure of parents or other social members are stronger than before.

Therefore we need to empower every part for more coordination, especially in the co-operation of schools and families, build up an entire community safety network together to prevent and revert the juvenile criminals. In reality, compare with the times before, youth delinquency can not be considered very serious. According to the police force department’s data, juvenile criminals had decreased recently. The rebellion mode of youths had been changed.

In the past there was street fighting, now they sell drugs or take drugs. But I still believe most of the youth in Macao are healthy and normal. Without any doubts, parents need to pay more attention, understand the characteristics of the new generation and than give guidance to them. School and society should try to provide more positive activities, let the youths express themselves and let them release the over actives.

Youths are curious and like exciting things. In reality, the society has many health activities that can satisfy and assist youth to develop. A healthy mode is an important strategy. Explaining the harm of drug to youth, avoid using single dimension (one speaks, one listens) education or leading out their curiosity in order to avoid the opposite effects.

We need to focus on some social techniques. For some, we need to understand the techniques of drug dealer and train the youth on how to refuse the drugs. This is more practical than a message. For some, if we can promote the youth to attend the anti-drug work, this can affect them more. We will be providing anti-drug programs hoping it will bring out better results.

ARTM: You think that the families are loosing their values and the kids get independency to early when they are not ready for that?

Dra. Celeste: With the development of the society and economy, the family structure becomes more modern and so the youth becomes mature more early. If we can get a balance we can reduce the negative side to the minimum. For the new generations, they are more early to be mature than before, on the contrary, advanced knowledge, what they study, and the capacity of knowledge had also relatively improved.

These are the positive changes of the new generation. For my opinion, I do not consider that the modern family already lost the family value but with couple occupational families increasing, they relatively reduced the time to take care their kids. If we can make some co-ordination and properly train children about how to make a smart and independent decisions, the new generation will better than us, the current generation.

ARTM: O Sr. Procurador-geral da RAEM, in one interview to a local newspaper told that the legislation about drugs don`t have a half term, and he says it`s a subjet that needs attention and reflexion wiht the intention to procede some changes? Hat is your opinion?

Dra. Celeste: I agree with the advice from the judicial prosecutor. By facts, Macao laws for drugs basically are very straightforward, but they need a lot of time to establish them and due to the some translation problems, some terms become unclear and do not match with reality. Drug problem goes very fast, so we need to always evaluate the situation and changes in order to match the reality and can adapt to the future.

ARTM: There`s a group of people that are ready to go to the United Nations to present one resolution to legalize the drugs. Do you agree with that?

Dra. Celeste: From our principle, we do not accept any kind of drugs to be legalized. This might work for countries that have serious problems in drug control. But for Macao, the problem is not so serious so considering these extreme methods are not necessary. One example is smoking. It is legal and takes many lives and very difficult to stop.

ARTM: In Macau, a large number of heroin conmsumers are infect with the virus of hepatit C and B, why not one programm of changing serynges to avoid this situation and at the same time to prevent the increasing of HIV?

Dra. Celeste: For the Macao drug addicts, in reality, the infection of Hepatitis B and C are very serious. There are many methods to tackle these problems. Needle exchanging is one of method. For now, our department through the co-operation of the health department is providing body checks for drug addicts and educating them on how to decrease the risks and stop needle-sharing behaviors. We expect these strategies can monitor the bias development, but any kind of assisting drug taking will not be applied.

ARTM: What are the guidelines and news for the 2003 in the fight against drugs and in the support of susbtance abuse?

Dra. Celeste: In the year 2003 for our department’s prevent work, we will plan and establish “health life education center” to indorse the promotion of prevention drug abuse and health education work to children. Beside this, we will establish one “anti-drug education resource center” in order to collect and provide the relative information and education resources to advance the anti drug education to be more universal and developmental. We will continue to promote the NGO’s to provide anti-drug activities and develop youth peer education plans.

We will finish to establish student and borderline youth’s drug abuse social survey and evaluate the recent youth drug abuse situation and increase the transition of different regions and co-operation. etc…

ARTM: The commitment of the NGO`s is been positive? Any sugestion to improve their services?

Dra. Celeste: Our Macao NGO’s takes up a very heavy responsibility in providing a long-term detoxification treatment for drug abusers. This is a very difficult job. On one side they need to make a financial balance. On another side they are in a lack of manpower. But these situations have already improved and the recent basic operations are stable. To advance in the services, first the NGO need to establish a stable teamwork. Because the lack of skilled workers is high, professional training is needed. They need to consider this work as a career and a self-development. It is also important to promote other to join this type of work.

ARTM: You think that the society should give more support to the ex-drug abusers? You think exist some descrimination to the drugs abuser`s.

Dra. Celeste: Society should support and assist the rehabilitation and also the families of the factors, which can reduce the rate of relapse. Drug addicts are not criminals.

They are the victims of drugs and could be considered as a patient. However drug addicts will commit crimes to accommodate their drug-usage. Examples of the crimes are drug selling, robbery, stealing, and etc. They should be responsible for what they have done.

ARTM: For last, one advice to the youngsters of Macau?.

Dra. Celeste: For the youths, I wish that they should cherish and properly use their valuable time; be brave when face the problem; make a wise decision for themselves; be firm to refuse the negative things; be of interest to the society; and be practical and optimistically to experience life. Never stop to fulfill themselves.