DRUG SCENE AMONG ASIAN-AMERICANS

to eight to ten Quaaludes every day for about thirty to sixty days, your body changes. It changes to the point that if you try to stop, you’ll go into convulsions. You’ll get headaches. You’ll throw up. You’ll go into all kind of physical reactions called withdrawal. So in order to prevent yourself from being sick, you have to keep taking it. That’s part of the addiction process. So, this was the drug that was specific to the Chinese population in our ethnographic study.

At that time, our program was also seeing Japanese kids, Filipino kids, and Korean kids addicted to Quaalude. Quaalude was the drug that was popular within the Asian-American population. This information totally supported and validated what we were trying to tell the city of San Francisco. They were saying no Asians had problems with drugs, because no Asians came in for treatment. But by evaluating the Asian—American population, we were able to say that “They do have a drug problem, but where in San Francisco do you have a Quaalude treatment program? You have a heroin treatment program, an alcohol treatment program, a cocaine treatment programs. How come you don’t have a Quaalude treatment program? Maybe if you had a Quaalude treatment program, and you identified the other drugs that are popular and predominant within the Asian community, maybe then there would be a reason for the Asian kids to want to get help. Right now, there’s no reason for Asian kids to want treatment, because there’s no one treating the drugs they’re abusing.”

Asian—American Substance Use Program.

So out of all this, we went political. We effectively organized and got all our political support. We accused everybody, and we got everybody mad at us. But out of this, we got two programs funded. One of these is the Bill Pone Memorial Unit. Unfortunately, Dr. Pone contracted cancer and died by 1980. We named our program after him, the William Pone Memorial Unit, for Asian-American substance abusers, an out-patient program to specifically treat Asian—American drug problems. We also got an in-patient unit called Asian-American recovery service program.

My program, the Bill Pone Memorial Unit now treats 70 to 80 different Asian-Americans every month. We were funded for forty. That’s all they gave us, 40 treatment slots, but we treat 80 by using volunteers and doing benefits. In the Asian-American residential program, we’re funded for 15 beds, but we overstack our program and have 20 beds full around the clock. This resulted from our understanding of what drug problems exist in the Asian-American communities and targeting our programs to address those problems.

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