Senior Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Thang Long, Deputy Chief of Staff of the HCMC Public Security Department, informed that in the first six months of this year, activities of drug criminals in the city have been rather complex.
Drugs enter the city mainly from the Golden Triangle, through Cambodia and Laos, and then are smuggled into Vietnam through border provinces. Another route is from European and American countries into HCMC by air under the form of express-delivery "gifts" or grey goods (taking advantage of delivery and shipping service workers, international students, and flight attendants) through Tan Son Nhat International Airport.
When reaching HCMC, drugs are divided into small quantities before being stored in warehouses of some businesses formed to blindfold functional agencies or inside certain apartments, rented houses. They are then either consumed in the city or transported to other nations by air and sea.
More seriously, drug criminals are now taking advantage of high technologies to devise more cunning methods for synthetic drug purchases. They establish private groups on the Internet that receive payment via banks or electronic currency prior to delivering the goods through distribution applications.
In the first six months of 2024, functional agencies in HCMC detected 1,622 drug crimes involving about 4,140 people and seized more than 736kg of heroin of different types. This is a rise of 538 cases compared to this time last year. Among them, 1,368 cases (related to 2,590 defendants) were prosecuted, while 223 cases were administratively handled.
Particularly, in the “Month of Action for Drug Prevention and Control”, the HCMC police force discovered and arrested 675 people in 274 drug crimes, seized over 62.3kg of heroin of different types. 219 of them were prosecuted, involving 424 defendants.
Facing such a complicated drug situation, the municipal leaders as well as Steering Committee 138 (Steering Committee for Crime and Social Evils Prevention and Control and Building Movement to Protect National Security) have mobilized the whole political system and the community to join in this serious fight against drugs.
In the summary meeting, Deputy Director Mai Hoang of the HCMC Department of Public Security said that in the near future, drug crimes in the world, the region and in Vietnam will continue to be complex, serious and unpredictable. Drug criminals in the country closely cooperate with their foreign counterparts and overseas Vietnamese people to transport drugs across the border.
They will continue to exploit advanced technologies to illegally transport and trade narcotic substances in increasingly large quantities and more sophisticated methods on all roads, railways, seas and air routes. Moreover, new types of drugs with more serious harmful effects continue to appear.
Therefore, to increase the effectiveness of the combat against drug crimes, Deputy Director Mai Hoang requested that functional agencies must focus on promoting propaganda activities and the movement of the whole society to protect the national security and to actively denounce crimes and drug abuse, especially in residential areas, hot spots of drug problems.
Simultaneously, it is necessary to form a monitoring list of drug addicts in each locality.
More importantly, the police force in HCMC must not stay behind drug criminals in this fierce fight. The police must actively learn about new technologies that might be used in drug crimes as well as those to better monitor localities.
On this occasion, the HCMC Public Security Department awarded certificates of merit to individuals and collectives with outstanding achievements in the combat against drug trafficking.
Various service providers are enticing teenagers to consume shisha and laughing gas, and disguising drugs as food, beverages, and electronic cigarettes. Currently, HCMC has 22,714 drug addicts. 932 people are under post-rehabilitation management; and 3,275 illegal drug users are under monitoring.
