Daijworld Media Network - Udupi (HB)
Udupi, Jul 14: Two-month long anti-drug abuse campaign was inaugurated earlier this week.
Deputy Commissioner Hephsiba Rani, in her inaugural address said, "Teachers play an important role in influencing the students. They are close to the students, they create positive atmosphere and help preventing illegal activities in the school. Today technology has become advanced, people can buy anything online. Udupi and Manipal are in a very advanced stage, if any illegal activities are seen in your surroundings, inform CEN cell immediately and make the anti-drug campaign a success in the district."
District Superintendent of Police Nisha James said, "Drugs is the third biggest mafia in the world. A separate division for control of Narcotics drugs 'CEN', is working towards bringing control over the supply of drugs. There is even a provision for death penalty when situation goes out of legal hand."
"The chances of changing the mindset of the culprits, who are already in jail is quite slim. In order to curb incidents related to drug use by younger generation, police department plans to conduct various awareness programmes in the month of July and August. Heads of institutions and teachers will be helpful in bringing about positive changes in behaviour of the students," She added.
Resource person for the event, Dr P V Bhandary, psychiatrist of A V Baliga hospital said, "Gutka, alcohol and smoking are the gateways to drug addiction. Over 16 crore people in the country consume alcohol and around 3.1 crore people use cannabis. Over 1.18 crore people between the age group of 10 to 75 take sedatives and 77 lac use inhalants."
"Now this has become part of our culture. Everybody starts it casually and alcohol addiction ends up increases the stress level of a person. There are three kinds of pressure in teenagers, pressure to perform, pressure to confirm and pressure to reform. We need to provide facts to realize the truth. These habits may comes from genetic background, mental health (self medication hypothesis), family and environment disturbances," He added.
Bhandary claimed, that most of the education institutions have become factories and they do not prepare children for accepting failure. He stated that addicts are not criminals and parents and society should understand this fact. He also urged that the addicts should not be discriminated.
Drug abuse is a complex problem which results from a combination of psychological and environmental factors. It is a medical problem which requires proper treatment to overcome addiction, unfortunately the success rate in this case is only 20 per cent.
Unemployment leads to addiction of drugs as well and the government should play a vital role to reduce unemployment. A strict law should be implemented which may help in reducing the amount of drug addicts substantially.
Various heads of educational institutions such as teachers, DDPU, DDPI and others participated in the campaign.
ASP Kumar Chandra welcomed the gathering and DSP Jai Shankar rendered the vote of thanks. The compering for the entire programme was done by Shivananda Nayak.