Traditional medicine is being tested as a way to help drug addicts kick their habit, but approval for large-scale trials is still pending.
Two people who took traditional mainland medicine called WeiniCom to break their heroin addiction suffered headaches and diarrhoea and were sent to hospitals last week.
They were taking part in a pre-clinical study conducted by the Pui Hong Self-Help Association, which has tested the drug on 36 volunteer drug addicts referred by rehabilitation centres.
'We're still in the trial stage of using Chinese medicine for kicking drug addiction,' the association's founding president, Dr James Chien Ming-nin, said.
'We have to wait for government legislation for Chinese medicine before we can carry out a large-scale clinical study.' He said two-thirds of patients in the study had reduced their reliance on methadone and heroin.
One patient said she successfully ended her two-year addiction to heroin in eight days.
