Drug abuse is becoming a serious issue, it seems, among students.
It is becoming so serious that parents and guardians have been urged to be vigilant in the wake of new and creative trends surrounding drug abuse around the country.
Speaking at the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji’s Women’s Conference in Nakasi on Saturday, National Substance Abuse Advisory Council (NSAAC) head Josua Naisele urged participants to think about their children and protect them from drugs.
He spoke about students smoking cigarettes and suki at primary school level.
There were also cases of students smoking marijuana with bongs made from plastic bottles and writing pens.
If that wasn’t bad enough, some students were sneaking alcohol into schools.
We seem to have a crisis that demands urgent action.
These revelations expose an alarming trend.
It is disturbing and demands our attention.
Mr Naisele has a lot of reasons to be worried about what he feels is the spread of methamphetamine as well. That’s addictive. There is potential for addiction to lead to unsafe sex and high chances of HIV.
It is encouraging to note that he welcomes Government’s plan to set up rehab centres, something we have been advocating for the past three years.
He talks about the dangers of ‘chemsex’, when young people take drugs and when they are high, engage in group sex.
“HIV is not only caused by having sex with a person who is HIV positive. It used to be like that.”
He talks about police arresting students who were in possession of meth and syringes.
We agree with Mr Naisele that there is a need for parents and guardians to be aware of their children’s whereabouts, who they were friends with, and talk with them regularly about the dangers of drugs.
The message is quite clear. We cannot afford to be complacent.
We hope that all stakeholders are inspired to address this serious issue.
Surely, when we delve into the challenges before us, we may note the complexities, and we may need multi-faceted approaches to deal with them.
We will have to consider factors such as poverty, unemployment, perhaps a lack of recreational opportunities, peer pressure maybe, availability of drugs and broken family structures, to name a few.
Aside from encouraging parental vigilance, we may have to consider more awareness about the dangers associated with drug abuse, encourage community support, motivate our police force to raise their efforts in the war against drugs, and the important bit on rehabilitation.
For this, there must be investment in education, health care and obviously support programs, and strategies that focus on addressing drug abuse.
The key is that we cannot afford to ignore this growing challenge.
