The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety is moving to identify and intervene early with groups at risk of narcotics addiction that are difficult to detect under existing judicial, treatment and rehabilitation systems, including young people outside the school system and military personnel. The aim is to extend a policy that has focused on blocking illegal narcotics distribution and providing treatment and rehabilitation after offenders are caught, so that it also covers the stage before addiction takes hold.
The ministry and the office of National Assembly member Jeon Jin-sook are holding a seminar at the National Assembly Library on the 29th under the title "Narcotics Gray Zones: How Do We Detect and Intervene?" The seminar treats young people outside the school system, military personnel and so-called drug substitute users as major blind spots in narcotics addiction rehabilitation, and discusses ways to intervene early.
Drug substitute users refers to people already indicted or standing trial for narcotics use who misuse over-the-counter medicines in place of narcotics. The agenda reflects a view that groups outside schools or ordinary community medical and counseling systems, or whose risks are hard to detect through existing narcotics management systems alone, need to be identified and supported separately.
Participants include military medical institutions, youth counseling agencies, addiction rehabilitation organizations and specialists in emergency medicine and forensic science. Oh In-mok, head of the psychiatry department at the Armed Forces Hospital, Kim Jung-hee, director of a youth counseling and welfare center, and Kim Hyun-jung, head of the addiction rehabilitation team at the Korean Association Against Drug Abuse, are among those addressing problems on the ground, while experts from the National Forensic Service and the emergency medicine department at Soonchunhyang University Bucheon Hospital discuss policy alternatives.
The ministry has concentrated its policy capacity on blocking illegal narcotics distribution and crime and on providing treatment and rehabilitation opportunities to users who are caught. Going forward, it plans to strengthen preventive intervention that detects warning signs early and connects those at risk to counseling, treatment, rehabilitation and other needed support.
"It is now time to go one step further, toward preventive and preemptive policy that detects risk early and connects people to appropriate help," Food and Drug Safety Minister Oh Yu-kyoung said. "We will use this discussion as an opportunity to explore ways to intervene early with groups at risk of narcotics addiction."
