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Malaysia, with a population of 28.25 million, consists of Peninsular Malaysia and the Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah. Substance abuse has been prevalent in Malaysia since the 19th century. In the early 20th century, the main drug of abuse was opium, which was primarily restricted to Chinese and Indian immigrant laborers who were introduced by British colonialists to work in Malaya (Noorzurani et al., 2008). However, the pattern of consumption changed in the 1970s when heroin became the abused substance of choice and Malays were the main ethnic group involved in heroin abuse compared to other ethnic groups, namely the Chinese and Indians (Noorzurani et al., 2008; Rusdi et al., 2008). By the 1980s, heroin use among Malaysian youth reached national crisis proportions (Navaratnam, 1988; Chawarski et al., 2006). A total of 194,897 drug dependents were registered by the National Anti-Drug Agency (NADA) in 1988; however, at the end of 2004, the numbers of drug dependents were estimated to be between 202,075 and 607,647 (Mahmood et al., 2005). By 2009, the cumulative number of confirmed drug addicts exceeded 300,000 (Sangeeth et al., 2009; Narayanan et al., 2011).