Asia is still just saying no to drugs

“FOR the first few days,” explains Aki, a young man who helps run a drug rehabilitation centre on the outskirts of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, in northern Myanmar, “some of them try to run away. So we have to keep them like this.” A young man, naked except for a tattered pair of shorts, lies prone on a filthy mattress, one leg locked in a wooden device resembling medieval stocks. He sweats and shakes, like many suffering heroin withdrawal. Dozens of other men mill around the clinic: a dimly lit, mattress-lined, hangar-like building reeking of sweat and foul breath. Beyond the back door is a much smaller, concrete-floored room with a wooden bath, a squat toilet and, next to it, a tiny padlocked cell crammed with four painfully skinny men: they, too, had tried to escape.