Islamabad is the nation's capital, but all that happens there is not necessarily an example to be proud of and copy. For instance, take the case of its high-end private schools. According to a report prepared by an NGO, 44 to 53 percent of the students in these schools are addicted to drugs. Frequent reports of drug paddlers hawking their wares at the gates of these schools have not caused an alarm for school managements. Nor even parents. Not until this week, when the education department appointed 62 focal persons from among the teaching staff who would present their recommendations on how control the menace. These focal persons will "review the situation and discuss in detail the issue of use of drugs with students," and then present their report to the education department. This is no small problem - not one or two or a dozen students are addicted to drugs, they constitute nearly half of the entire student strength of these schools. This must not have happened overnight; it must have taken many years for the drug mafia to make inroads into educational institutions. Where were the schools managements, teachers and parents of the addicts, when it was no secret that Pakistan is a two billion dollars drug trade market, and is growing. Why then do the custodians of our schools, colleges and universities throughout the country didn't appoint the focal persons, take parents into confidence and spotted the drug paddlers at their gates? As to how many of these addicted students use heroin, there is no figure, but this must be known to all concerned that rehabilitation of a heroin addict is almost impossible. And that some 40 tons of heroin is consumed in Pakistan per year, about 110 tons is trafficked through the country and all of it is imported from Afghanistan where, when it was in power, the Taliban government had literally eliminated poppy cultivation. But that's no longer the case now.
How to get rid of this menace? Efforts can be made, and should be made, but total elimination of drug addiction at the national level is not possible right now. The challenge is too big: there are some 7.5 million drug addicts, about 800,000 use heroin, and that number is growing at the rate of 40,000 per year. However, in case of educational institutions determined efforts can greatly help. In their case, the first step should be interception of supply lines. Not only should the schools fix CCTV cameras at the gates and around the premises, suspected suppliers, when spotted, should be handed over to police. At the same time, staff working at the gates should be kept under surveillance. Why a young man falls prey to drug addiction there are quite a few causes; it could be curiosity, use for pleasure, peer pressure, state of mental health, lack of self-confidence and excessive stress. There is no reason why a dedicated teacher or a parent should not know if their ward was passing through a stressful time or behaving abnormally. The media too owes it to its viewers to keep itself updated on this growing challenge and to know how to confront it. And at the level of authorities concerned it is imperative that supply is snapped. Of course, opiates reach here from across the western border, but there are a host of sources for supply of drugs, including tablets, liquors, hashish, cannabis, and sheesha. Breaking the supply chain is crucial, because in Pakistan for post-addiction care and rehabilitation there is no matching structure. This evil of drug addiction has to be nipped in the bud.