NDACC releases startling stats on teen drug use
Last year some of us adults seemed a little sceptical when the National Drug Abuse Control Council released survey results that suggested a high percentage of our children are experimenting with–and even abusing–drugs and alcohol. Well, sad to say, the results for this year are in, and unfortunately, they support previous findings. I was at the Belize Institute of Management today for the presentation.
Vildo Marin, Minister of Health
?We are losing the war. They are far more young people who are getting themselves hooked to tobacco, alcohol, and the other drugs like marijuana and crack cocaine, which is so very addictive. And it is very important that we alert them of the dangers, especially of crack cocaine which is so highly addictive that the rehabilitation rate for example is only two percent. So for every hundred addicts that enter rehabilitation, only two persons really recover from it.?
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
The statistics in the war against drugs and substance abuse in Belize are startling.
According to a recent survey of secondary school students, children as young as twelve are experimenting with drugs, seventy-six point six percent reported that they smoke one to five cigarettes a day, seventy-four point four percent drank one to five alcoholic drinks a day, and twenty-two percent of the boys and girls claimed to use marijuana every day.
And according to Karen Bowden, School and Community Coordinator of the National Abuse Drug Control Council of Belize, the problem is only getting worse. Bowden maintains that the community, especially parents, needs to support NDACC?s educational programmes.
Karen Bowden, School and Community Coordinator, NDACC
?If we don?t do something now then pretty soon it will be too late. And the main focus has got to be on reaching every community in Belize, not just with the ?Say No to Drugs? message, but rather with the ?Find the Hero inside Yourself to Face Life in the Absence of Alcohol and Other Substances.?
?We have started targeting our children at an earlier age. There was a time when NDACC was primarily standard four, five and six. Today, NDACC is preschool through to tertiary level so we are in every classroom, we are at every level and we?re bringing the education to our children in particular. And why I?m saying children is because prevention begins there.?
But the work is never really done. Today, NDACC officially commissioned twenty members of a new Drug Advisory Council to assist in prevention, education, community, treatment and rehabilitation programmes. The commissioners are members of the business community, law enforcement officers, teachers, students, and government officials.
As part of today?s commissioning ceremony, NDACC presented just one alternative to abusing alcohol and other harmful drugs.
Karen Bowden
?Unless you empower people with the skills to make good choices and good decisions, then you are working in vain.?
?Today you can talk to most of our kids and they can tell you what alcohol will do. You talk to an infant one child and that child will tell you that alcohol will cook your liver. And nobody wants to get their liver cooked, so the message is getting out there. It?s a bit slow, [but] it?s a slow process.?
According to NDACC, this month a national household drug prevalence pilot survey will be conducted to assess the presence of alcohol and other drugs in Belizean homes.
