Johnny Nguyen’s ice addiction proved a valuable asset to the notorious Vietnamese crime gang, the 5T, who employed him as a ‘‘tester boy’’ for their methamphetamine drug ring.
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His addiction meant he could accurately test ice imports for purity and determine how much each batch could be sold for on the streets.
‘‘I was a ‘tester boy’, it’s how I got involved bringing ice from overseas. Because I was heavily on the drug, I could could tell the quality of gear just by smoking it,’’ he said.
‘‘I could tell what percentage it was and what we could get for it on the street.’’
The former gang member, now a husband and a father, has been clean since he left behind the brutal gangland scene of south-western Sydney five years ago.
His story follows the same, sad pattern of the children of Vietnamese refugees who ended up in Cabramatta’s notorious drug dealing scene.
With parents away from the family home working multiple jobs to rebuild their life in a foreign country, unsupervised teenagers desperate for a way out of poverty ended up drifting into organised crime.
‘‘My parents were always working, there was no father figure at home, so even at the age of 10 I was hanging out on the streets late at night; there were no boundaries,’’ he said.
‘‘In high school there was peer pressure and drinking at parties and one thing led to another from weed to ecstasy, then cocaine, speed and eventually ice.’’
With uncles already involved in the 5T, the gang at the centre of Sydney’s drug trade, Johnny’s descent into a cyclical trap of drug use and organised crime seemed inevitable.
‘‘When I look back, so many of the really bad things that happened, so much of it was connected to ice, it left my life completely a mess,’’ he said.
‘‘I used to hallucinate, I was paranoid with the police, other gang members and nine years of my life was spent in this pit.’’
After a chance encounter with a motivational Christian speaker, Johnny started on a path out of the tangle of gang politics and ice addiction.
‘‘A guy travelling around Australia giving talks came up to me at a service station and invited me to his speech; that was the moment that changed my life. It was June 16, 2010 – I remember the date, that’s how powerful it was.’’
Johnny followed the same path to redemption and now travels Australia and New Zealand speaking to high school students, using his own unedited biography as a cautionary tale for teenagers contemplating gang life.
‘‘That life is glamorised, you don’t see the pain or struggles, the paranoia,’’ he said.
‘‘When we walked the streets, we had a rep, people knew who we were but when I was home by myself, I couldn’t sleep.
‘‘I knew that life was going to take me down. I’ve hit rock bottom, I’ve made my money, I’ve been on every drug you can mention, but it’s just not the life to live.’’
Johnny Nguyen will speak at the Potters House Christian Church, Dapto, at 7pm on May 29-30.