Fighting Against Youth Drug Abuse

It is quite disheartening to realize that youth drug abuse has become an increasingly popular trend in Hong Kong in which teens have used drugs even when they are at school or at their leisure time like having fun on the beach.

Does the social problem reach an alarming level that all stakeholders should turn their ideas on how to combat the problem of drug abuse into actions which should be stepped up to help schools and parents to resolve the predicament? The answer is definitely yes.

Some schools facing the challenges of their own students taking soft drugs such as ketamine are able to view the problem squarely and take action to help those troubled youths as mush as they could. Instead of penalizing students involving drugs, the school principal was trying to give a helping hand to those 'bad' students and took them out of the abyss. While some schools attempt to evade the issue, the other school heads have been very positive to rack their brains to work out ways to help those students who are in deep trouble. A case in point is that a pilot voluntary drug test, suggested by the commission report led by the Secretary of Justice in 2007, will be in place in a cluster of Tai Po secondary schools which sets a very good example for other schools in the territory despite the fact that its effectiveness was questioned and the issues of privacy and human rights in relation to the drug test further exacerbated its implementation.

While the notion of voluntary drug test is sound and it early arrival is doing more good than harm to school administrators and parents, other preventive measures such as parental education and collaboration of police school liaison officer, teacher and social worker should be further strengthened in order to keep an eye on students' whole person development. More resources should be granted to help teens to quit drugs if they were identified positive in the drug test. Extra resources might have been funded to establish drug rehabilitation centres. In the mean time, the issue of youth drug abuse deserves more attention from all walks of life as it is a problem of society. More care and supervision should be provided to those rebellious youths. Home-school relation should also be fostered so that there is better communication among all stakeholders such as parent, teacher, student, social worker and police. Civil education is also a must to curb the problem from getting worse. I reckon the problem of youth drug abuse needs the help of all people and again we should not fish for the answer to this question 'Who is to blame?' The troubled youths need our trust and support which could transform them into a good citizen in future.