Qiannan Prefecture: Determined to Call Back the Sunshine

Romain Rolland said: “good and evil are two sides of the same coin.” So is the case with sunshine and shadow. Duyun City is located in Qiannan Prefecture in the south of Guizhou Province and has been known as the “Bridge City on the Plateau”. Jianjiang River passes through the city and witnessed the rapid changes here.

In early 2006, under the great support from the Party Committee and government of Qiannan Prefecture, “Duyun City Love Baseball Processing Plant” was established as an enterprise for job placement of community-based drug rehab persons, aiming at strengthening the management and control over drug addicts, helping them to purify the mind and return to society. After a few years, the exploratory practice initiated by the narcotics control department of Qiannan Prefecture has developed and grown into a “Sunshine Project” universally promoted throughout the province! Countless addicts march along this sunny avenue towards a new life.

Determined to remove the “label” of “drug city”, Duyun City established Guizhou Province’s first job placement enterprise.

One day in early 2006, Duyun City finally ushered in the bright sunshine after consecutive days of cloudy weather. However, Hu Xiaojian, who was then the Mayor of Duyun City, did not seem excited for the rare sunshine. In that period of time, there was a matter that weighed heavily in his heart like a stone. Backdated to two years earlier, in July 2004, Duyun City was listed among the “Top 17 Counties subject to Focused Drug Rectification in Guizhou Province” by the Provincial Narcotics Control Commission.

Originally a beautiful mountainous China Excellent Tourism City, now attached with such a disgraceful label, the Mayor felt extremely nervous. In the subsequent anti-drug work meeting of Duyun City, Hu Xiaojian expressed his position resolutely: “I will never leave Duyun before removing the ‘label’ of ‘Drug City’!” A vigorous anti-drug war soon broke out in Duyun City. Under the support of the provincial health department, Duyun set up special methadone treatment stations to help the drug addicts for withdrawal.

However, the methadone maintenance treatment function only controls and slows down the drug dependence, but cannot completely get the persons free of the addiction, regain physical and psychological health. By the end of 2005, more than one thousand drug addicts have been identified and registered in Duyun City, with one six people at the withdrawal consolidation stage. In a manner of speaking, although the focused remediation work in Duyun city had made evident results after two years, there was still no substantial progress in the aid, education, and management work on the drug addicts.