Preventing drug abuse a different approach

I was surprised to read the recent Sri Lanka Anti Narcotics Association report which revealed that over 50 per cent of our youth between 16 and 25 years old are chronic drug abusers.

The Director of SLANA rates a number of factors such as lack of vision, lack of parental supervision, parental conflict which led to this increased drug abuse.

The war on drugs, in one form or another, has been going on for a few decades in Sri Lanka. But, can we be satisfied with the outcome? Let us face the ground reality.

If we've learned anything about man's nature over the last century it is that a certain percentage of people will always demand drugs. And a certain percentage will always supply drugs.

No matter how many millions we give to drug-rehab clinics or how many millions we pour into the legal enforcement, the reality of supply and demand will remain.

Reason: we cannot re-engineer human nature. In short, what it means is that drug abuse will be with us a long time. Perhaps forever.

However, that probability does not logically imply that we should abandon our concern about drug abuse or give up trying to find answers. Like liberty, love and life itself, many problems require eternal vigilance.

As big as it is, our culture doesn't have a tight turning radius. The current war on drugs will show some progress here and there. On and off there will be sporadic successes.

Big drug bust here; Another two small busts there. That kind of thing. But over time, the focus should increasingly narrow to protection of kids.

From this point onwards, more productive ideas should spring from the broader culture.

Actually, I can see that the early stages of this positive movement are underway. What are these outside-the-fence ideas? How fast are they arriving? Overall, they are arriving slowly much as the schooling movement emerged, manifested as a resurgence of parental concern, awareness, self-education and action.

If there's one thing that's obvious from talking to parents, it is that they are getting fed up with Government promises to 'solve the drug problem' facing their kids. The war goes on, they say, but the drugs get more and more plentiful.

I believe it's time parents take matters into their own hands. What can they do? Many things. For instance, parents can organise to educate themselves and their kids about drug dangers and exaggerations.

They can learn how to spot pushers and teach their kids to avoid them. They can organise to shove the worst of the pushers out of neighbourhoods and schools, in the process often developing better, commonsense relationships with police to shut down the more dangerous local drug dealers.

By these activities they are learning to use and spread the techniques for identifying, avoiding and ending drug abuse that is, they are tackling the toughest part of the problem: the demand side. NGOs can spring up to show parents, teachers and others how to spot kids with drug problems and how to help.

Some NGOs are already dealing widely with drug problems in the industry and the ideas honed there are moving into the parental sphere.

We can go a step further. In selected parts of the country, anti-drug-pusher militias can be organised, even under the umbrellas of religious bodies and I am confident they'll be effective.

Judges can get into the act, too, going easier on what some would term citizen vigilantism acknowledging self-defence arguments to citizens who physically 'handle' people who try to force drugs on their kids.

I maintain we should not look for the nation's drug problems to receive magical improvement from any Government. Of course the State anti-narcotic body is sincere (for the most part) and will contribute to solutions in special cases.

But it will not have the most important effect. Citizens themselves can solve the problems primarily outside government.

In the traditional and practical Sri Lankan tradition, drug problems will get better but they won't be fully 'solved' or 'defeated', for that is utopianism.

The best of the improvements will be: (1) more direct private action against immediate problems of pushers; (2) heightened awareness by parents about the critical role and techniques of self-responsibility of drug use; (3) steady improvement in parents' self-education about the true science of drugs' effects and dangers; (4) a revamping of drug laws to reflect the realism of intoxication, probably along the lines of alcohol laws.

Here in the early 21st century, I firmly believe that we will find better answers to drug problems at the individual, family, school, workplace and neighbourhood level.

The revolution won't happen today, next month, or next year. But later this decade, perhaps it will. In 20 years, almost certainly.