Up in smoke

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

The Senate Standing Committee on Interior may have been shocked by the findings placed before it, primarily from an NGO, which state that over 50 percent of private school students in Islamabad were using drugs, but many others will not be quite so startled.

These dramatic figures put out by the group need to be much more scientifically assessed, but while precise data is obviously crucial, the anecdotal evidence all around us should not be ignored. It is obvious the misuse of substances, including nicotine, is immense and involves children as young as ten. This is true of all tiers in society. Substance abuse is not limited to a particular group.

First of all, we need to accept the fact that it exists – in many different forms. Scoffing at the data put forward by the Islamabad-based NGO will solve nothing. Regardless of its precise dimensions and regardless of precisely what drugs they are referring to, the problem exists. It involves drugs in the form of pills bought for thousands of rupees, drugs sold in rolled up scraps of paper along roadsides for a fraction of that price and damaging substances sold in neat packets, which, despite the law, even pre-teens are easily able to buy.

Few questions are asked, whether the transaction takes place at a dingy stall or a smart supermarket, and little effort appears to be underway to talk more openly about the problem and educate both parents and children about the risks involved.

This process of talking and raising awareness is crucial. In the US for example, the country so many of us like to emulate in different ways, in 1995 around 30 percent of high school students smoked. Today, that number has fallen to just over 15 percent. That is still too high, far too high, but at least we see a graph that slides downwards. In our country, it continues to climb up with the arrival of sheesha adding yet another dimension to the problem.

At various levels, schools need to play their part. Given that Pakistan has almost seven million drug users according to international monitoring groups, one of the highest percentages in the world, almost every school whether in the public or private sector should be required to raise awareness about the problem with compulsory lessons on the effects of tobacco for children and the need to monitor potential usage for parents.

The real problem is that we are essentially in a state of denial. At the more elite levels in society, both schools and parents deny a problem exists at all. Any high school student in the country, if he or she chooses to be honest, will accept that it does and in many cases express a degree of alarm about it. Something has gone very wrong about the way we are raising the next generation and how much we are doing to safeguard their future. A country where so many are addicted to nicotine and to other drugs will struggle to build for itself any kind of future at all.

There are of course laws in place to control drug use with the last decade seeing a spate of laws concerning cigarettes and tobacco. The problem of course is that these are simply not implemented. It is not possible to implement them until a higher degree of awareness is created. Nicotine in any form, whether it comes as the stylish e-cigarette, sheesha, or the more mundane paper rolled cigarette, or ‘beedi’, is lethal and is directly linked to death.

Of course, it is not easy to persuade young people not to play with death. For them, it seems a far off reality. But the duty of all teachers, all educators, all parents and every other person in a position of responsibility must be to alter this thinking and provide information that is both accurate and persuasive. Essentially, we need to build conviction that the use of drugs is not ‘cool’. Instead, it can only lead to sickness and social risks of many other kinds.

There is also a desperate need for an economic analysis of the situation. We know that in all our mohallas, all our shanty towns and all our lower income residential areas, the use of drugs is especially common. The conditions of life compel too many to turn to these crutches and a few startling studies have shown that, while the price of every other commodity has risen, the rates at which heroin are sold have remained relatively stable.

There is something terrifying about this. We need experts in social research to go out into the field and examine what percentage of household income is squandered away on drugs, including tobacco in its various forms. To what extent does this deprive families of money that could be used for more useful purposes including nutritious food, education and healthcare. The superficial research that has been carried out suggests the issue runs very deep and has been with us for far too many decades.

It is also true we are not making much progress in fighting it back. In fact, the drug culture seems to be spreading rapidly as a result of growing social tensions, economic hardship and conversely for a very minuscule percentage of the population, a situation in which children have access to huge amounts of money and, it seems, too little parental intelligence. After all, how else would schoolchildren or teenagers acquire the cocaine that reports suggest does the rounds in a few small circles, sold to its users at exorbitant rates for each ‘line’.

How we tackle the issue will hold the key to the future. It can only be managed step by step. In the first place, parents need to be convinced that they are the key guardians to their child’s future and their child’s welfare. It is primarily their task to ensure their children know how to resist pressure from peers and why they should simply turn away from drugs. When the problem is never spoken about, or when it is simply denied, it becomes impossible to accomplish this task.

At a wider level, and given the scale of the danger, the government and those who manage schools also need to become involved by running public campaigns and also by offering young people recreational facilities which can help them veer away from the more harmful pursuits so many turn to.

The high levels of depression among teenagers are also something we need to take note of. The problem is an unrecognised one. But low self esteem, little hope of future opportunity and little sense of direction all contribute in some ways to the epidemic of drug use that we are seeing. We need to devise a way for our future generations to escape the trap. The reports which suggest that up to 80 percent of children under 12 in some localities, notably boys, are using one drug or the other are shocking. This should simply not be happening. It is as simple as that.

Putting in place policies to challenge the trend and create a graph which slips downwards is something society and the state will need to work jointly towards. Quite evidently, laws have not been sufficient. A great deal more is required.     

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com