Children are using or abusing drugs as a coping technique for anxiety, says Substance Abuse Advisory Council (SAAC) representative Josua Naisele.
He said this during his presentation at the recent Fiji Teachers Registration Authority and Ministry of Education congress at the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa in Nadi.
Mr Naisele said parents were often unaware of how to address their children abusing drugs.
“When we do counselling, a lot of students resort to drugs because of the type of abuse, neglect and exploitation,” he said.
“An effort should be made to ensure that children’s state of mind is calm, stable, and mostly happy.
“This is one of the challenges in school. Before you begin your teaching classes in the morning, ensure that the students are emotionally stable and that is one of the challenges that we face as teachers in our classroom.”
He said domestic abuse also exacerbated the child’s drug addiction, which provides an escape from the volatile situation in their homes.
“Child abuse in families, sometimes children face abuse in their families, and they become perpetrators later.
“Parents do not know what to do to address this, this is one of our problems during counselling.”
He said severe corporal punishment could also be a contributing factor.
“Families chase their children out of their homes and a lot of parents are coming and saying I do not know what to do with my child, so we try to help with parenting skills to help them in guiding their children.”
He added that normalising drug use in homes, poor parenting skills and lax disciplinary measures negatively impacted children.
Sometimes young people see all these things happening, and they think it’s normal to use drugs, it’s normal after drinking grog to go and washdown (drink alcohol).
“The child thinks it’s normal to be a polydrug user, using two to three substances at once, so you are smoking and also drinking beer.”
