YOUNG PEOPLE LURED INTO HEROIN USE

By Belinda Parsons

Community leaders and welfare workers are struggling to stem the growing
number of Melbourne teenagers using heroin.

They say children as young as 14 are being lured into using heroin and
dealing on the streets by being offered the drug initially for free.

The leaders stress the problem affects all cultures but there is extra
pressure on new migrants, particularly from across Asia who find it
difficult to break into mainstream society.

Collingwood and neighboring Fitzroy are the latest focus for the drug problem.

the chief executive officer of the North Yarra Community Health Centre, Ms
Vera Boston, said poverty and unemployment were behind the drug problem,
which should be viewed as an economic issue.

"There's a lot of money to be made there . . ." Ms Boston said. "We know
what unemployment is like among young people (and) we know that it's much
higher for people from nonEnglishspeaking backgrounds."

Ms Boston and the state Labor MP for Melbourne, Mr Barry Pullen, have
called on the State Government to reconsider a submission by the
Collingwood and Fitzroy communities for $240,000 over three years to employ
a community worker.Vietnamese community leaders acknowledge there is a drug
problem among young people and blame family breakdown and lack of family
support, settlement problems and unemployment.

The former president of the Australian Vietnamese Services and Resource
Centre, Miss Tan Le, said young people in the critical teenage years needed
family support, especially when they were resettling.

"When you see children at the age of 14 getting involved in dealing with
drugs, and it is a major community concern, . . . it stems from the fact
that the family, while they still want to provide the support, they are
unable to when they have integration problems," she said.

Employment difficulties, the cultural shock for men of wives going out to
work for the

first time and children who were educated to be assertive created family
tension, Miss Le said.

"The older people will try and maintain those family values that they
brought across from Vietnam, and they will try to hold on to their children
and they will try to impose their own values on the children and that tends
to cause a lot of tension."

Scant employment prospects and the political and economic climates all
contributed to an uncertain future for young people, who often lacked goals
and aspirations, she said.

She said there was a highly visible drug trafficking problem in Footscray,
which the Vietnamese community was trying to deal with.

"But because it stems from very deep within the whole settlement process,
it will take some time."

Miss Le said firstgeneration migrants expected to work in factories to
create a better life but they assumed their children would go to university.

"Jobs for the older brothers and sisters are not available. Their brothers
and sisters have done four years of university; they're now unemployed.
There is no easy way out."

Improving the family support network with organisations that supported
young people was one answer, she said.

She said the drug problem affected only a minority of migrants. "Most
people have been able to grasp the opportunity (for a new life) that
Australia has provided."

The Mayor of Maribyrnong, Cr Mai Ho, said she had discussed the drug
problem with senior police, who had increased patrols.

The council had received $305,000 from the State Government to spend on
drug education and was considering employing three officers. Since
September, it had employed one officer, who regularly met traders and
residents, Cr Ho said.

Footscray traders planned to run a poster campaign to make drug traffickers
aware they were not wanted.

"They pass by the drug trafficking people but no one has really told them
off," Cr Ho said.

"They are actually scared," she said.