Vietnam to prosecute 21 people for cross-border drug trafficking

Vietnam will prosecute 21 local people for trafficking and transporting drugs from Cambodia to the country, local newspaper People reported Friday.

The investigation agency in southern Ho Chi Minh City has proposed the municipal People's Procuracy to prosecute the 47-year- old man named Le Van Tien from southern An Giang province and his 20 accomplices for the charge.

According to the investigation agency, Tien and his accomplices bought both finished bills and materials from Cambodia, and then produced and sold ecstasy in the city. They had sold dozens of thousands of lab-made drug pills, mainly to bars and discotheques until local police arrested them and seized 6,000 lab-made drug pills from March to November last year.

Under Vietnam's laws, anyone possessing, trading or trafficking heroin of 600 grams or above can be sentenced to death or life in prison.

The number of drug addicts in Vietnam surged 56.8 percent to 158,428 in 2005 from 101,036 in 2000, according to a recent national conference. The Ministry of Public Security has suggested the Vietnamese government to give bigger budgets to anti-social- evil programs, including development of drug detoxification centers nationwide.

Vietnam, which has targeted to become a drug-free country by 2015, annually spends estimated 320 billion Vietnamese dong (20.1 million U.S dollars) on detoxification activities.

Source: Xinhua