Tuesday 30 December 2008

'2579' arrested on drug related charges this year? What does this mean!!

Exactly, what is the significance of this ? If the police media officials have stated that 2,579 people were arrested on drug related offenses, what we are seing here is the tip of the iceberg.
I will easily hypothesize that for every arrest, there will be 10 hidden users, so let us multiply the 2579 by 10, so we may have a hidden population of atleast 25,790 drug users atleast in the country....the numbers may infact be much more.
There have been reports which have also suggested that over 80 % of our prison population may be drug addicts, over 75% of our youth population may be drug addicts....and yet only 400 or so is the bed capacity for drug rehabilitation...with just over 5 counsellors to carry on the drug rehabilitation programme....which is now run based on the therapeutic community model( by ex addicts,read further from this link;http://abdullahwaheedsblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/reaching-out.html).
So the picture we see is gloomy. Police also seems to be adament on creating awareness that more and more drug users are minors.....all this is just so alarming...so pathetic.
We have to crack down on the drug pushers, drug dealers and drug lords in the country and break the interactions between the drug mafia between the countries....of the region. We have to reject the wealth that makes the wealthy wealthier and the poor rich by selling drugs. The people of the country must start a silent movement against the sale of drugs, criminalisation of drug addicts and stand up to the atrocities committed by the drug dealers who are pushing our children to take the path of drugs.
Some thing more has to happen.....some thing more than criminalising these youngsters and sending them to prison....we all have to really become proactive.
Who are the other 10 people who are using drugs silently without being caught? Can we help them before its too late?!!!!

6 comments:

nish said...

wow, i dont know what to say... you are right naaz, this IS a gloomy situation.
all this makes me think of India, you know, when there was the outburst of AIDS. in our case, its drugs. its good that atleast some are trying to make ppl aware of the situation, but can we make a change with only a few people trying while the rest just watch....

nymphs said...

Oh my god those statistics!! I wonder where this country is going to be within ten years time. Is every single youth going to be a partey???? Half the budget will go into maintain prisoners for public safety. Is that it???? Talk about being a burden to the society. Our whole generation is already into drugs, can we still sleep soundly on our beds at night? Are we going to be preoccupied by the new regime that we do don’t focus on drugs anymore? Is the politics the most important thing in the world? Is the new government also going to focus on ways in which they can be elected for a second term rather than resolving drug issues. Are they afraid that if they build an educated young generation they might overtake the current government? Is Anni making the same mistake as Maumoon? Wake up campaign is not enough!!! Act today and history will remember you as the government who intervened and saved a country from a terrible fate. Fail to act and history will remember you as a government who stepped aside and let drugs take over when people most needed you. Your name doesn’t have to be Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela to make a difference.

Khilath Rasheed - journalist and blogger from Maldives said...

Is that why police now have "no choice" but to let "offenders" go free even after they are arrested, because there is no space to hold them? (I read the MinivanNews.com article) Then how does this mean equal justice to those who are given convictions while others are let go free just because there is no space to hold them? If some offenders are let free, is it fair that other offenders should be held?

Anonymous said...

10 hidden users? that's a little bit too optimistic I'd say. Taking into consideration that the current teen population considers using hashish/marijuana quite a casual thing. If you talk to youngsters who smoke hashish you would be shocked how casually they take the issue of smoking hashish. There is a growing trend amongst the youth that heroin is 'bad' and hashish is 'cool'.

Anyways 10 hidden users is very optimistic, how about 20 hidden users? The no. of drug users in Maldives is a shocking figure, indeed.

Anonymous said...

Who are the other 10 people...? a very scary question indeed... it could be you or me...

But then, we also talk so much about what we must do... But we dont have Rhekha's in this country for several reasons... She used to write reading books for underprivileged children for twenty years in Bangladesh... and still continues to do so...

We had a training program recently conducted by the Family Ministry for training of workers on abuse against women and children... Only four out of nearly thirty invited and confirmed participants showed up for three hours a day for two days...

We must do so many things before its too late, Naaz! But then who will do it. Who can do it. You ... or Me?

Anonymous said...

... and there are more important things for this nation to worry about than the youth on drugs...