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Spotlight story

Photos reveal drug users untold stories

Dang Tran Khanh, in one of the exhibitions more than 100 photos: My father bought this plastic-coated chain to prevent abrasions. It used to be for chaining me. Now my dad and I use it lock up the motorbike, to keep it from getting stolen at lunch. HANOI, June 20, 2011 Vietnams first photo exhibition on the private lives of drug users, Face-to-Face with Drugs, launched today during Drug Control Month. The Center for Supporting Community Development Initiatives (SCDI) and Tomorrow Media organized the event with PEPFAR funding and technical assistance from Pact, under USAID. Photographer Pham Hoai Thanh worked for a year with 50 people who have overcome or still use drugs in provinces across Vietnam, to create an exhibit that recounts four periods in his subjects lives: exposure to illegal substances, struggles with addiction, finding a way out, and giving back to society. Their stories stress the need for support from loved ones and from community organizations such as self-help groups, which ensure access to services including behavior-change outreach, methadone treatment and empathetic counseling. The launch let people who have used drugs share the stage with Le Duc Hien, Deputy Director of the Department of Social Evils, who reiterated official plans to ease punishment of drug use. SCDI hopes the event will help reduce stigma and discrimination, while reminding drug users they are not alone in the fight against the negative effects of drugs. When asked what story moved him most in the exhibit, photographer Pham Hoai Thanh (top) said he wished only that one other subject could be present: A 19-year-old named Bi, who risks arrest if he travels with heroin. Bi featured in Pacts spotlight story for August 2010. USAID Mission Director Francis Donovan asks the subjects to sign his photo book. Donovan choked back tears as he shared his conviction that taking part in the exhibition had made each of them an outreach worker of the most powerful kind.

Pham Hoai Thanh/SCDI/Tomorrow Media

Nathan Wilkinson/Pact

Hanoi

Nathan Wilkinson/Pact

Media darlings: Reporters flocked to hear the subjects of the exhibition, who attended from across Vietnam. Pham Thi Minh, head of Coming Home Coalition, a Hanoi community group that receives Pact support through CARE, closed by saying: I want the community to see us. We can be healthy. We can be beautiful.

VIETNAMESE AND AMERICANS IN PARTNERSHIP TO FIGHT HIV/AIDS

Richard Nyberg/USAID