Source: The Age Contact: 28 Nov 1997 Webpage: http://www.theage.com.au/ YOUNG PEOPLE LURED INTO HEROIN USE By Belinda Parsons Community leaders and welfare workers are struggling to stem the growing number of Melbourne teenagers using heroin. They say children as young as 14 are being lured into using heroin and dealing on the streets by being offered the drug initially for free. The leaders stress the problem affects all cultures but there is extra pressure on new migrants, particularly from across Asia who find it difficult to break into mainstream society. Collingwood and neighboring Fitzroy are the latest focus for the drug problem. the chief executive officer of the North Yarra Community Health Centre, Ms Vera Boston, said poverty and unemployment were behind the drug problem, which should be viewed as an economic issue. "There's a lot of money to be made there . . ." Ms Boston said. "We know what unemployment is like among young people (and) we know that it's much higher for people from nonEnglishspeaking backgrounds." Ms Boston and the state Labor MP for Melbourne, Mr Barry Pullen, have called on the State Government to reconsider a submission by the Collingwood and Fitzroy communities for $240,000 over three years to employ a community worker.Vietnamese community leaders acknowledge there is a drug problem among young people and blame family breakdown and lack of family support, settlement problems and unemployment. The former president of the Australian Vietnamese Services and Resource Centre, Miss Tan Le, said young people in the critical teenage years needed family support, especially when they were resettling. "When you see children at the age of 14 getting involved in dealing with drugs, and it is a major community concern, . . . it stems from the fact that the family, while they still want to provide the support, they are unable to when they have integration problems," she said. Employment difficulties, the cultural shock for men of wives going out to work for the first time and children who were educated to be assertive created family tension, Miss Le said. "The older people will try and maintain those family values that they brought across from Vietnam, and they will try to hold on to their children and they will try to impose their own values on the children and that tends to cause a lot of tension." Scant employment prospects and the political and economic climates all contributed to an uncertain future for young people, who often lacked goals and aspirations, she said. She said there was a highly visible drug trafficking problem in Footscray, which the Vietnamese community was trying to deal with. "But because it stems from very deep within the whole settlement process, it will take some time." Miss Le said firstgeneration migrants expected to work in factories to create a better life but they assumed their children would go to university. "Jobs for the older brothers and sisters are not available. Their brothers and sisters have done four years of university; they're now unemployed. There is no easy way out." Improving the family support network with organisations that supported young people was one answer, she said. She said the drug problem affected only a minority of migrants. "Most people have been able to grasp the opportunity (for a new life) that Australia has provided." The Mayor of Maribyrnong, Cr Mai Ho, said she had discussed the drug problem with senior police, who had increased patrols. The council had received $305,000 from the State Government to spend on drug education and was considering employing three officers. Since September, it had employed one officer, who regularly met traders and residents, Cr Ho said. Footscray traders planned to run a poster campaign to make drug traffickers aware they were not wanted. "They pass by the drug trafficking people but no one has really told them off," Cr Ho said. "They are actually scared," she said.