Drug abuse has been on the desk of world leaders for years and the topic is gradually igniting with a light of doom and hence, if not quenched has the potency to extinguish and deteriorate the next generations ultimate goal of sustaining the ecosystem.
The threat substance or drug abuses in any form poses to the sustainability of the world is one that certainly ought to be tackled with immediate and appropriate measures. World leaders seemingly posing to be reactive to this enemy of world’s human resources have seen little or no adequate and proper results with regards to the fight.
As it may be, drug is not any substance that humanity can exist without. Therefore what is a drug? A drug is a medicine or any other substances which has a physiological effects when ingested or otherwise introduced into the human body. However, drugs can be described as a licit drug when it has the legal prescription from medical practitioners. Meanwhile, illicit drugs are drugs that violate the legal health prescription of medications and hence, further cause negative effect when introduced into the human body.
Drug abuse is steadily progressing into the lives of humanity and it is not omitting the younger generation. I will define drug abuse as the consumption of illicit drugs which is characterized by the urge to obtain and consume a substance regardless of the negative consequences. However, it is sad to note that, in as much as some young people across the world have not been spared by this horrifying act of abusing drugs; majority of Ghana’s growing population are being hit with many factors which has one way or the other submitted them to engage in the act.
A Ghanaian Senior High School student in a secret confession with a journalist who works for an online news portal, Xorlali.com had opened up on his misfortune which led him into engaging in drug abuse. The young man whom for the sake of the interview is called Kofi in a secret interview with Jacob Menkah, a Ghanaian media practitioner voiced out the series of unfortunate events which entangled him in the traps of drug abuse.
Kofi when asked about how he started engaging in drug abuse, ” I was enrolled in one of the best public Senior High Schools in the Eastern region of Ghana at the age of 18 years. My parents weren’t financially sound therefore, I always ate from my friends who had more than enough food at their disposal. So I literally turned into their errand boy in order for me to feed myself without disturbing my parents for any money. After I got to year two in the second semester, we were always going to the town without authorization to buy food to eat. On our way back from our usual purchasing of food, we got to an uncompleted school infrastructure and my friends said we should go and take something in the building.
“Once we got there, one of my friends took out something that looked like dried green leaves and he wrapped it in a brown paper. After, he took out the match and light it up. My friends were all smoking it and it got to my turn which I couldn’t say no so I smoked for the first time. However, they noticed I didn’t know how to smoke so they started teaching me in subsequent days,” Kofi said.
Jacob Menkah further quizzed Kofi with respect to how was he funding the purchase of the Marijuana, ” I didn’t have to spend even a cedi in buying the marijuana because my friends always had enough money to buy,” he answered.
Kofi further said, “… during my time at the Secondary School, majority of the male students were into some form of drug abusing and even some of the girls were into drug abuse. With the girls, some smoked the cigarettes and they enjoyed getting high with the marijuana used in making toffees. One time, a girl in the Literature class was caught in possession of marijuana by the mathematics teacher.”
There are many cases of persons under age engaging in drug abuse. My question is, does this mean that the Second circle education authorities have failed to provide keen supervision in training up these students for them to take over the baton of managing the affairs of this country for it betterment?
Meanwhile, I will want to share the most abused drugs by Ghanaian citizens. This includes Marijuana, Tobacco, Alcohol, and caffeine. More so, the World Health Organization (W.H.O) in a research conducted by them have stipulated that, one of the drugs being abused most by Ghanaians perishes not less than 3.3 million African citizens annually. It further stated that, 15.3 million Africans have drug disorder while it also seized the opportunity to state as a matter of fact that, alcohol has the potency of inflicting almost 200 diseases to individuals.
Moving on, the causes of drug abuse are enormous however, the primary causes of drug abuses are:
(1) Curiosity
(2) Bad peer influence
(3) Legalization
(4) Misinformation
(5) Influence from role models
That not withstanding, i will applaud the Ministry of Interior for their Narcotics Control Act, (Act 1019) legal instrument which clearly restricts the level of direct and easy accessibility to drugs by individuals however, i want to encourage the Ministry of Health and all the authorities who have a role to play in helping to avert drugs being abused begin to implement these laws intensively.