A Ho Chi Minh City leader has asked relevant forces to step up anti-drug screenings at Tan Son Nhat airport and crack down on hotspots due to an explosion in drug-related arrests and seizures.

Le Thanh Hai, chief of the city's Party Unit, made the remark Saturday at a five-year review of the Politburo's decree on enhanced drug prevention and control.

Phan Anh Minh, vice director of the HCMC police department, said the city arrested around 16,000 people for drug crimes in the past five years, up 20 percent from the previous five years.

[continues 203 words]

Smokers, Quoting Dealers, Said Some of the Weed Comes into the Country Via the Northern Port in Haiphong, a City That Has a Reputation for the Import and Export of Illegal Goods.

HANOI, Vietnam - For the young Vietnamese dope smokers rolling up outside a smart Hanoi cafe, local cannabis is just not good enough. As with their Adidas caps, iPhones and Sanskrit tattoos, so with their choice of bud: Only foreign will do.

Potent marijuana grown in Canada and the United States is easy to buy in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, say regular smokers, and it sells for up to 10 times the price of locally grown weed. That's perhaps surprising given that marijuana is easy to cultivate regionally, and bringing drugs across continents is expensive and risky.

[continues 746 words]

HANOI (AP) - For the young Vietnamese dope smokers rolling up outside a smart Hanoi cafe, local cannabis is just not good enough. As with their Adidas caps, iPhones and Sanskrit tattoos, so with their choice of bud: Only foreign will do.

Potent marijuana grown indoors in Canada and the United States is easy to buy in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, say regular smokers, and sells for up to 10 times the price of locally grown weed. That's perhaps surprising, given that marijuana is easy to cultivate regionally, and bringing drugs across continents is expensive and risky.

[continues 311 words]

HCM CITY - HCM City authorities hope to reduce the rate of people relapsing into illegal drug use, as part of efforts in the city's ongoing battle against drugs crime.

The city's plan to fight illegal drug use by 2020 with a vision to 2030 was launched today by the HCM City People's Committee.

Authorities aim to reduce the rate of relapse among former drug addicts from the current rate of 17 per cent to 10-15 per cent.

[continues 705 words]

Nguyen Manh Chien said he began using heroin in 1999 and failed to quit despite two different stays at rehabilitation centers.

The 41-year-old native of Hai Phong City's Le Chan Ward was using the drug four times a day, seven days a week, spending around VND200,000 each day before receiving methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) treatment as part of a pilot program that began in 2008 in Hai Phong and Ho Chi Minh cities.

After two months of treatment, Chien said he was no longer attacked by heroin cravings, and he regained seven kilograms and his normal health. He is now leading a normal life with a job at an electronics repair service.

[continues 584 words]

Marijuana is being grown secretly in Vietnam in cellars, an official said at a conference in the Central Highlands Lam Dong Province Friday.

The plants are kept in underground rooms with the light on day and night, said Nguyen Van Du, deputy head of the Department of Cooperative Economy and Rural Development under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Du said the cultivation of hemp plants has become complicated recently, adding that it's hard to recognize marijuana when it is planted together with other vegetables in the mountainous areas.

[continues 90 words]

HCM CITY - The deployment of more sophisticated trading means and connivance of some local officials have made it more difficult for police to curb rising drug abuse and trade in HCM City, a senior police official has said.

Colonel Phan Anh Minh, Deputy Director of HCM City Police, also said that the number of criminal cases relating to drugs in 2008 had increased by 36 per cent compared with 2007, mainly in the districts of 1, 2, 6, 11, Tan Binh, Tan Phu and Binh Chanh.

[continues 230 words]

China And Vietnam Are Increasingly Used As Conduits, UN Drug Office Says

Trucked in from the nearest commercial harbour, the containers marked GLDU 7367200 and WHLU 5086522 arrived in a bonded warehouse in the Vietnamese frontier town of Mong Cai, waiting to be taken to Guangxi province in China.

That was when members of the Vietnamese C17 anti-drug squad struck this week, seizing nearly nine tonnes of cannabis resin, or hashish, the largest drug haul ever in Vietnam.

The shipment - reportedly with a street value of $90-million (U.S.) - originated from Pakistan and was headed for Canada, according to its bill of lading. There was no immediate confirmation yesterday whether the drug was truly bound for a Canadian destination.

[continues 398 words]

Thanh Hoa -- The ministries of Education and Training and Public Security, in co-ordination with the Thanh Hoa Provincial People's Committee, yesterday launched a campaign in honour of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking today.

The campaign is aimed at calling all people, including the 23 million students nationwide, to respond to the UN slogan "Do drugs control your life? Your Life, Your Community. No Place for Drugs."

The slogan will be used for three years for a campaign focused on different aspects of drug control: drug abuse in 2007, drug cultivation and production in 2008 and illegal drug trafficking in 2009.

[continues 332 words]

HA NOI -- Over 3,800 drug cases were brought to trial in Viet Nam in the first five months of this year during what officials call the biggest crackdown on drug smuggling and trafficking in recent years.

The police's aggressive zero tolerance policy resulted in the arrest of 5,500 suspects and the confiscation of 300kg of heroin and opium along with 20,000 ecstasy pills.

Police have said that they are increasingly targeting drug runners that utilise remote border crossings to smuggle contraband into the country. A ring that was disbanded in late May exemplified this approach. The group, police said, was working with criminal syndicates from overseas to transport heroin into the southwestern border province of Long An from the Golden Triangle via Cambodia.

[continues 243 words]

HA NOI -- Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked ministries, offices and People's Committees in cities and provinces to launch a crackdown on drug crime.

The five-month crackdown will last from May 29 to September 26, under the Prime Minister's order.

Dung has granted authority to the Ministry of Public Security, in collaboration with the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministry of Finance and city and provincial people's committees, to direct the anti-drug campaign in an attempt to suppress drug crime in key areas like the borders and the coast.

[continues 236 words]

Joshua Marston burst onto the film scene as a screenwriter and director with Maria Full of Grace, winner of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, among others. Julie Ginsberg picked his brain while his film played at UNFPA's International Film Festival.

Inner Sanctum: I saw that you completed a Master's Degree in political science before attending New York University film school. Would you say that you have political goals with your films?

Yeah, there's no question that the work that I did in political science has informed the filmmaking that I'm interested in, and for me it's always been a question of finding some middle ground where I can be creative and also do something which has some relationship or bearing on the world that we live in. So I'm interested in telling stories, fictional stories that are personal but that are told in a context that has some larger social or political relevance. For example, the story of Maria Full of Grace is one girl's story, but it gives you a sense of the larger world of drug trafficking and immigration.

[continues 1125 words]

"May I have a newspaper?" says a young man as he runs over and reaches through the iron fence, hoping to be lucky enough to get his hands on one of the newspapers that the young reporter is carrying.

In minutes, the stack of newspapers is gone, much to the regret of the many men who arrived late.

This is a daily fixture of life at the Hoa Binh Rehabilitation Centre, an inpatient drug treatment programme, where people from different cities and provinces all over North Viet Nam have voluntarily placed themselves in order to treat their addiction to drugs.

[continues 995 words]

Vietnam will double its anti-drug police force in six southwestern provinces to curb narcotics trafficking from neighboring Cambodia into Vietnam, state-controlled media reported Saturday.

The decision came at a meeting of law enforcement officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday, the Youth newspaper said.

Speaking at the conference, deputy national police chief Lt. Gen. Nguyen Viet Thanh expressed concern that only 15 percent to 18 percent of the country's total drug cases were uncovered at the border areas, compared with the rate of 80 percent to 85 percent in other countries.

[continues 144 words]

A DRUG trafficker was executed by firing squad in Vietnam as part of the government's unyielding crackdown on the narcotics trade, a court official said today.

Trang A Co, 27, was put to death at dawn yesterday at an execution ground in the northern province of Bac Giang, the official from the provincial People's Court said.

He was found guilty in November last year of trafficking more than 3kg of heroin from neighbouring Laos in the two-month period before his arrest in July 2002.

[continues 56 words]

HANOI, Vietnam - Two Canadians were sentenced up to 16 years in prison for drug-dealing in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamese news media reported Tuesday.

Randy James Sachs, 27, was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Nguyen Van Hai Sheena, 41, to 16 years at a one-day trial Monday, the Liberated Saigon newspaper said.

The two were arrested in May 2003 while distributing 1,000 ecstasy tablets to dealers in Ho Chi Minh City night clubs, the newspaper said.

Vietnamese media said Sachs and Hai were part of a ring that trafficked the pills from overseas to Ho Chi Minh City for distribution to dealers.

[end]

HANOI - A Vietnamese woman has been sentenced to death for attempting to traffic heroin to Taiwan, a court official said on Tuesday.

Nguyen Anh Minh, 36, was arrested on July 29 last year at Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat airport while trying to board a flight to Taipei after customs officers discovered nearly 700 grammes of heroin in her luggage.

Minh, who was found guilty on Monday by the southern business capital's People's Court, said she had been paid 800 dollars by an anonymous Vietnamese man to deliver the haul to a Taiwanese man, the official said.

[continues 70 words]

HO CHI MINH CITY - Two Canadians could face the death penalty in Vietnam for possession of the drug ecstasy.

Randy Sachs and Nguyen Van Hai were arrested in Ho Chi Minh City last May for allegedly possessing 1,000 tablets of ecstasy.

An investigation is underway and formal charges have not yet been filed. It is not known if the death penalty will be asked for in this case, but Vietnam has imposed harsh sentences for drug trafficking in the past and routinely executes people who deal drugs.

[continues 144 words]

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Vietnam's government plans to spend 77 billion dong (dlrs 5 million) on new equipment, training and drug-sniffing dogs to help its customs agency fight drug trafficking, an official said Friday.

The money is to be spent over the next five years, the General Department of Customs official said.

The official said it was important for Vietnam to curb drug smuggling at its borders rather than trying to stop the illegal trade inside the country.

Most of Vietnam's known 120,000 drug addicts use heroin, which is smuggled from the notorious Golden Triangle where the borders of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet.

Drug-related crimes have shown no sign of decline in Vietnam despite tough penalties. Last year, 55 people were put to death by firing squads for drug-related offenses.

[end]

Five drug traffickers, including three women, were sentenced to death in northern Vietnam as part of the government's crackdown against the narcotics trade, officials said Monday.

The People's Court in Hung Yen province handed eight other defendants prison sentences ranging from 13 years to life imprisonment on Saturday after a three-day trial, a court official told AFP.

The gang, masterminded by the 39-year-old Do Thi Hoa, was convicted of trafficking nearly 10 kilograms of heroin since 1998 from neighbouring China and Laos to Hung Yen and the nation's capital, Hanoi.

[continues 92 words]