Ketamine use rising in Kaohsiung schools: city councilor
2015/11/18 22:34:55
CNA file photo
Taipei, Nov. 18 (CNA) The use of the ketamine as a recreational drug is a growing problem in Kaohsiung schools, a city councilor said Wednesday, disclosing that 160 students in the southern Taiwan city are currently put into a counseling program for taking drugs.
Last year, some 900 students in Kaohsiung were referred to the police for drug use, city councilor Chen Tsui-luan (陳粹鑾) said.
She said 1,733 kilograms of illegal drugs were confiscated in the southern Taiwan city last year, the biggest amount in five years, and a third of it was third-grade ketamine.
The data is alarming and suggests that ketamine is still a popular recreational drug in Taiwan, Chen said.
If the police do not crack down on drug use on school campuses, it will become a problem “scarier than the dengue fever outbreak," she said.
Fan Sun-lu (范巽綠), director-general of the Kaohsiung Education Bureau, said schools in the city have been working with police and prosecutors to crack down on the use of drugs among students.
She said the city government has also conducted anti-drug seminars to educate students about the dangers of drug use and to deter them from experimenting with drugs out of curiosity.
(By Wang Shu-fen and Lee Mei-yu)
