"Grandma, when is daddy coming home?"
The sad look and heart-breaking call of a child 
touch me the most and make it the most difficult for me to let go...

Mr. Jeffrey Koo, Jr., Chairman of the CTBC Anti-Drug Educational Foundation, often sees children of drug addicts while visiting outlying areas or marginal corners in cities coping with families hurt by illicit drugs and without the care and love they deserve. Ever since then, he decided to devote himself to addressing the issue of illicit drugs in Taiwan.

As indicated in the 2021 "World Drug Report" of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in a population of approximately 275 million people around the world who are exposed to illicit drugs, about 36.3 million are affected by drug abuse disorders or are addicts. Illicit drugs and drug abuse are issues becoming more complicated each day. Meanwhile, we have witnessed the emergence of many addictive substances which are not explicitly illegal but remain in the gray area of the law. These substances, like other illicit drugs, can harm users and, particularly, the more vulnerable teenage population. In other words, besides regulating and understanding illicit drugs and addictive substances, we need to better understand "addiction" so we may learn how to protect ourselves from becoming "addicted". 


Most people know very little about "addiction" but are highly sensitive to the subject and avoid the subject when possible. "Addiction" is, in fact, a psychological phenomenon; it is commonplace and grounded in human biology. An "addiction" is a type of behavior or habit that is generated after exposure to certain stimuli out of a normal range. Such exposures can stimulate the central nervous system’s response in the brain to make one feel excited or ecstatic. When such a behavior or habit causes adverse consequences to the body and the mind and adversely affects daily life, learning, or work, and when one is unable to stop the behavior or habit on his/her own, it becomes an "addiction."

The CTBC Anti-Drug Educational Foundation was established in 2015 on the principle of "education on illicit drugs to join the fight against drugs."  CTBC has devoted itself to the promotion of anti-drug education and launched "The Truth about Illegal Drugs" road-tour to properly educate society about the dangers of drugs. The road-tour includes a mobile exhibit that combines interactive technologies to communicate over five years of knowledge and ideas learned in the fight against illicit drugs throughout 22 counties and cities in Taiwan.  Building upon the success of interactive technologies applied in last year’s road-tour, this year (2022), we will start off with real-life stories of people who have beaten addiction. The immersive experience along with the virtual reality puzzle navigates spectators through "addiction" so they may experience for themselves the pain and difficulty addicts face while learning that "getting addicted" is far easier than thought and that preventing addiction relies on awareness, education, and support from society