SHE'S a recalcitrant glue sniffer, having been in and out of jail for drug offences most of her life.

Her family are at their wits' end over her empty promises to quit and her inevitable return to her old ways.

They want her locked away for a long time.

The twist - they are not parents despairing over a delinquent child; they are the children of an addict mother.

Unusually for what is seen mainly as a problem among youths, the glue sniffer here is a 52-year-old woman.

And it's her children who want her to kick her drug addiction that has tormented her for more than 30 years.

Madam WH Lee, a mother of four, has often vowed to turn over a new leaf but would return to her habit - sometimes just hours later.

Last week, she was arrested for glue sniffing again, after her daughter called the police.

Investigations are ongoing.

Her second daughter, who wanted to be known only as Miss Wang, 18, told The New Paper that living with her is "like a nightmare".

While Madam Lee readily admits to being a glue sniffer, she doesn't seem to realise the gravity of what she's doing to herself and her family.

"I don't do it (sniff glue) outside, I only do it at home," she told The New Paper matter-of-factly at her two-room rental flat near Balestier last week.

In front of her family?

"I do it in the toilet," replied Madam Lee, who has been divorced twice.

She shares the flat with her second daughter, her bedridden mother, 78, and a maid.

Her eldest daughter, from her first marriage, has her own family. Her son, 16, and youngest daughter, 14, from her second marriage, live with their father.

Madam Lee admits that "jail is terrible".

Yet she would return home from the remand centre with new packets of glue in her pockets, claimed her eldest daughter, who wanted to be known only as Madam Tan, 34, a customer service officer.
 
Madam Lee was surprisingly upbeat and open when The New Paper met her. She became evasive only when asked if she thought she was in the wrong.
Each time, she would avoid the question or clam up.

What is not right, she said, is her family repeatedly calling the police on her.
"A youngster should only advise or counsel the elder. She shouldn't call the police - it's too much," she said.

But it is because she left them with no choice, said her daughter.

Madam Tan laughed bitterly when her mother said she did not talk to her before turning her in.

"I have spoken to her so many times. I even pleaded on my knees. She doesn't listen.

"She admits she is wrong only when she needs money. Then she says she will change. She always says it is the last time."

She has lost count of the number of times she has called the police on her mother.

Madam Tan hopes that this time, the court will do the family a favour by putting her mother away for a long time.

While some might see her as being unfilial, she feels it's the best for her mother, whose health is failing.

"I would rather she be in jail, where she is taken care of, than to receive a call one day telling me she is dead," she added.

Producing a medical report dated 2007 from Alexandra Hospital, Madam Tan said her mother's addiction is causing her kidneys to fail.

Her eyesight is also damaged.

Miss Wang added their mother is sometimes so weak that she can hardly walk.
"I don't want her to go to prison. But we can't stop her. If we take the glue from her, she just gets more fed-up," she said.

Blacked out

Madam Lee insisted her health is fine.

But she admitted that years ago, she blacked out after sniffing glue and woke up in a pool of blood from a gash on her head.

In 2007, after sniffing glue, she got so high that she started a fire in the living room. The blaze caused a water pipe overhead to burst, she said.

But Madam Lee laughed it off, saying that she was so confused at the time that she wanted to shampoo her hair under the burst pipe.

But Madam Tan was not amused.

She said: "She's lucky it was a water pipe. What if it had been a gas pipe?"

Madam Lee's drug habit started in 1976, the year she had her first child. She blames Madam Tan's late father for introducing her to heroin.

She was sent to a drug rehabilitation centre for six months that year, she said.
She added that after being clean for the next nine years, she started taking "ice" (methamphetamine) and Subutex.

In 2004, she picked up glue sniffing to cope with the death of a friend from diabetes, she claimed.

She said she stopped taking other drugs because if she was convicted again, she would be considered a LT2 (Long Term Imprisonment 2) case and would be looking at a minimumof seven years' jail.

The maximum penalty for inhalant abuse is a $2,000 fine, six months' jail, or both.

In the last three years, Madam Lee has been sent to an anti-inhalant abuse centre three times. Her longest stay was nine months.

Just this year alone, she has been sentenced to prison twice - three weeks in January and a month in April.

Madam Tan feels the penalty for inhalant abuse should be tougher.

Glue can be as destructive as other drugs on the addict and the family, she said.
After the interview, Madam Lee promised this reporter that she would quit.

But that same night, she was arrested for glue sniffing.

This article was first published in The New Paper.