An estimated 30,000 people in Taiwan are believed to use ketamine, and long-term use of the drug can damage the kidneys, bladder and the brain’s cognitive functions, a physician said yesterday.
Stephen Yang (楊緒棣), surgeon-in-chief at Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital’s Taipei Branch, said one of his patients — a man surnamed Chen in his early 30s — began taking ketamine several years ago to reduce work-related stress, but continued use resulted in serious bladder damage.
After a year of use, Chen found himself having to urinate as many as 43 times a day, while his urine became sticky and thick with traces of blood, while his bladder shrank and became fibrotic, Yang said.
Chen underwent three surgeries over the past few years, but he was not able to quit the drug, and now his kidneys and bladder are so seriously damaged that he needs to undergo dialysis three times a week and use a bladder catheter every day.
Yang said 387 people are being treated for ketamine addiction in 12 randomly sampled hospitals nationwide, indicating that about 30,000 people are engaged in ketamine abuse based on Food and Drug Administration data last year on the rate of ketamine abuse among people aged between 12 and 64.
The data shows the rate of ketamine abuse in recent years is between 0.27 percent and 0.54 percent, while drug abuse reports from hospitals showed that ketamine is the most popular illegal drug among people under 19 years old.
“About 3,000 people with ketamine addiction suffer from serious bladder damage, with about 50 of them undergoing bladder- removal surgery,” Yang said.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
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