DRUG SCENE AMONG ASIAN-AMERICANS

were conducted on the Asian—American prisoners. What we discovered was startling to us. Out of close to 1000 Asian- American prisoners, over 90% felt that the main problem for which they were in jail was not because they liked robbing people, or liked stealing and committing all these anti-social crimes, but because they were drug addicts. They were addicted to drugs and did these other activities because of their drug addiction and to support their drug use. The next startling statistic was, out of the approximate 990 drug—using Asian prisoners, only 5% had ever thought of getting treatment. It just didn’t enter into their minds, these Asian—Americans, that drug addiction is a disease, so they didn’t get treatment. Not surprising to us in the treatment field, we found only 1.7% of this population had ever received any kind of drug education, or treatment, or involvement, for their drug problem. So right away, we felt confident that there were significant problems and somehow Asians were falling through the cracks. They were being missed. They weren’t receiving any services and were getting worse.

There is a denial within our community that we need to change. We need our community to become more aware that we are not immune to drug abuse, and we have to face these problems as well.

Asian-Americans Viewed as Model Minority.

The next step in our process as a Task Force was even more difficult. We then had to deal with a society that had a bias, and which had originally identified Asian-Americans as a model minority and imposed that value upon our community. They were, therefore, unwilling to look at drug problems within the Asian- Americans. We went before the city and county of San Francisco. We said we identified significant drug problems within Asian- Americans, and we needed to provide for some sort of targeted, focused intervention. Like Dr. Pone needed, we needed to have a high profile Asian-American treatment service, or delivery system, for drug abuse in our community in order to start addressing these problems. But the city and county of Sam Francisco said, “Look, you’re the model minority. Look at “Yamaguchi”; look at “Taniguchi.” He’s a valedictorian, the star of the class, and the citizenship award winner; Asians never get into problems. They also told us that Asians didn’t have drug problems, quoting statistics showing that only 1% of all the patients in San Francisco treated for drug problems were Asian- Americans, so they wanted to know why we needed money for Asian- American substance user problems. Now, we’re trying to tell them that that’s the problem, not the answer. Asians did have drug problems but were not coming in for treatment. Still, they fought with us and wouldn’t listen.

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