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It is a proven fact that most of the peddlers that are rounded up by the police are small flies in a big game. The much bigger dealers are hardly apprehended and brought to justice and even when it happens it has been proven that they are meted out with special treatment while serving their sentence, as we have witnessed in the recent past.
Sri Lanka which has a history of using some of these drugs in its indigenous medicinal treatment probably has had a more tolerant attitude towards drug abuse in the initial stages when the country was going under the threat as a result of its open economy policy in the late seventies, when the estimated number of drug addicts were roughly around 20,000.
In the eighties the government review the almost set of laws that were less effective and redressed it. Today there are more than 645,000 numerous drug users at all levels but living mostly within the urban network.
Though the urban slum dwelling lifestyle has been largely cited as the main offenders, a certain number of persons from within the high-wrung elitist block of Colombo too are found to have been abusing the code.
It is also suspected that most of the elusive traffickers too are from the higher echelons of this society, masquerading as top businessmen and in touch with high powered politicians.
In a country where almost 500 hectares of Cannabis is found to be under cultivation, the use of it runs into way past the year that the free trade policy came into being.
What happened after that was the network consisting of international drug dealers set their eyes upon Sri Lanka as a possible selling point and later it became a transit point within the broad based international drug ring.
It is common knowledge now that there are many Sri Lankans languishing in many foreign jails convicted for drug trafficking or being found using the stuff.
Many NGOs and religious organisations that are operating relief measures to addicts by rehabilitating them have found out that most young people addicted to drugs come mostly from neglected homes, where parents have no time to keep tab on their children's day to day behaviour leaving them to lead their own lives on a whim.
Though this is a small fraction of the Colombo society, it is happening now as a trend where parents think that just because their children are turned over into the care of an international school all the good manners will be automatically instilled in them.
It becomes only natural after some time that children who are moved into these schools by parents seeking their entry to the affluent society as well, will seek permission to attend parties at a young age.
A sixteen-year-old today can be found returning home after such parties at midnight and parents think less of such matters.
What is cited above can be yet called occurrences within a small fraction of a larger part of society that is yet to be drawn into such lifestyles, but children are turned out to become offenders and sentenced to serving jail terms because these affluent parents have turned a blind eye to 'acquired' lifestyles of their kids at a stage when they still had no idea of how to look after themselves.
City slum dwellers are both traffickers and users of various drugs. It is also revealed that it is from within these offenders who are serving minor prison sentences that the habit is fostered among non-users who enter prison to serve sentences for various other offenses.
Most of these city dwellers that are released from prison after serving their sentences are found to go back to their old job of selling drugs, sometimes owing to the lack of suitable employment and in most cases because of the easy method of raising themselves a high revenue.
The method of instilling the habit of drug use amongst non-users is simply to be able to identify the person's emotional shortcomings, as in the case of young Sunil who is undergoing rehabilitation in a religious centre at present.
He said that his mother has left to the middle east when he was just five. His father who became a chronic alcoholic in the later years created an atmosphere of unhappiness during Sunil's growing years.
It was in his teens that he first experienced the use of Cannabis in the company of a classmate, one of who's father was in fact a cultivator of the stuff.
In the later years in the company of his friends Sunil used to spend his weekends away from home with friends smoking Cannabis, which by now had waned of any effect that it had on relieving their teenage fears of insecurity.
Growing up without his mother under the spell of a drunken father and an elder sister who eloped with a youth of the village and turned into prostitution by arriving in the city is not the best recipe for any young man who wants to live a full life.
It was later as a young man that Sunil became an addict of Heroin. It was when he reached uncontrollable levels of using it and collapsed that he was entered into hospital and later handed over to the rehabilitation centre where he is presently working as a voluntarily helper.
Children that one comes across on the streets tagged along by women to beg are mostly drug addicts in the making because the women holding on to them for the purpose of begging are mostly found out not to be their biological mothers.
If you look closely in some cases the child that some of them are holding onto is fast asleep most of the time probably, already under the influence of drugs.
Sita, a young girl from the village working at a city Karaoke Bar, is a regular heroin addict. Born to modest village surroundings, Sita's mother decided to marry for the second time after she returned from the middle east and her two elder daughters were married away.
But the mother's marriage to a much younger man than herself led the mother to take wing back again seeking employment abroad to meet up with her young husband's demands to do so.
Isolated at home young Sita was compelled to flee from her young step father's amorous advances and marry at a younger age.
Not realising that she has married to a heroin addict, Sita was shocked and found that she had to work and support her husband's addiction relentlessly. It led her to the point where she is today working as a hostess at night and as a prostitute during the day to keep both her husband's and her addictions fulfilled.
Sources connected with rehabilitating drug addicts say that it is rarely that they find addicts voluntarily coming to them for treatment. It is only after later years once they have faced up to some fatal incident as a result of their addiction that they are actually handed over to them by the authorities.
Even then during the initial stages the patient's only intention is to return to his or her former habit. It is during these stages that the patients are kept under a watchful eye as it is a time that they may even try to escape from the centre and run away to their old habitat.
Talking to most of them, one finds that they actually do not want to return to their homes even if they have one, especially the ones who come from restless surroundings and crowded city dwellings. They get used to the peaceful setting within the home that rehabilitated them.
Some of these homes try to find employment for this youth but they say that there is no such system in Sri Lanka where most of these homes are helped by private companies that are willing to take in a few of the rehabilitated youth, even though they have tried to do so.
It is very pertinent these rehabilitating centres, that are funded by international agencies in some cases; actually train these youth in some kind of work where they can find self employment or work for some small enterprise upon leaving the centre.
However it is time that the general public is made more aware of this menace as they are warned towards how to keep vigil over other things that are casting a bad spell over our society on a daily basis.
Most parents live unsuspectingly with children who are drug addicts in their own homes, because they are not aware of any tell tale signs that they are supposed to look out for in people who are addicted to such substances.
Beside the fact of gearing themselves at taking in drug addicts and curing them, the rehabilitating officers should seek the support of the electronic media at educating the general public, especially parents, of how addicts behave and their attitudes.
This may enlighten some parents or friends to spot a silent addict and may be able to rescue him from furthering his addiction.
Another factor to be taken into consideration is that there are no female rehabilitation centres in the country though it has been found out that the number of female abuser rate is slowly rising unchecked.
Even in upper middle class families in the city there are supposed to be teenage girls who are leading a visibly glamorous life, moving around in plush cars, visiting exclusive night clubs wearing expensive clothes.
These girls are easily lured into drug use by suitors who stalk their trail until they introduce drug use as a high society trait in the west, citing popular actors or singers who has been charged for possessing drugs or suffered an overdose of the stuff.
It is all posed as a posh past time of the idle rich languishing in posh places. Eventually scores of such young girls and boys from upper middle class families in the metropolis have fallen prey to such imaginary nonsense adapting themselves into such pretentious lifestyles.
Later most of these girls and boys are either used as peddlers, they themselves work as couriers or work as prostitutes to keep their drug habit afloat and also to retain their high profile as 'upper circle society birds'.
It has been a grouse all along that the death penalty, which was changed to life imprisonment in 1977 by President J.R. Jayewardene, be brought back into effect.
Not withstanding the rising crime levels during her tenure President Chandrika Kumaratunga re-imposed the death sentence in 2004. But it is yet to come into effect.
Drug abuse and the peddling of it are major menaces facing our country today. Social injustice and parents that turn a deaf ear to the emotional needs of their children and youth who are denied their rights by errant political systems that have reigned, needs to be held responsible for creating such a monster.
Bringing in the death penalty and hiding behind the hangman to cover our own shortcomings can hardly be a cure.
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