EDITORIAL: It says a lot that drug trafficking and addiction, even in schools and colleges, has spread so far and wide and become so commonplace that it doesn’t even count as a major issue for authorities any longer. This problem has been growing for at least 2-3 generations and accelerated when Pakistan decided to play strategic depth in the region and involve itself in the Soviet Afghan war of the 1970s and 80s, which opened the floodgates to what soon became known as ‘drugs and Kalashnikov culture’ in the country.
Ever since, schools, colleges and university campuses have been the perfect marketplaces as well as breeding grounds for the business of illicit and illegal drugs. Early attempts at checking it proved futile because the large sums of money involved in this business made it very easy for the bad guys to grease official palms when necessary to keep the law looking the other way, even occasionally indulge in the magic of the drugs itself, free of cost, if they chose to. And before anybody knew it this web had extended too far, both in academia and law enforcement, to root it out completely.
Fast forward a few more years and drug addiction has even become quite common in younger children of relatively smaller class groups. And it’s even more disturbing that instead of admitting these problems and hammering out solutions, school administrations across the country invariably try to play down this threat, out of fear for their own reputations and profits, no doubt, and so they themselves help bury a very pressing problem under the carpet.
That is why it was encouraging that the opposition in the Sindh assembly once again voiced its concern about sale of drugs in education institutions of Karachi the other day, warning the government about the extent of student drug addiction. Sadly, though, all the provincial minister for excise and taxation could say in reply was that the government was “taking action to stop the sale of drugs in schools and colleges”. That is not satisfactory, because clearly whatever action the Sindh government – or any other provincial government, for that matter – is taking is not good enough otherwise numbers of addicts, the few that are known, would not be skyrocketing all the time.
Pakistan also does not have the right kind of rehabilitation centres, which makes the problem much worse. First, there is societal pressure, because often nobody – not even family elders – is willing to accept and let others know that there is a problem of drug addiction at home. And the few that are willing to brave societal pressures for the sake of the future find nowhere to go because it’s often been reported that most of the drug and addiction treatment centres that do exist are either too expensive for a majority of the population or are simply shady outfits run by quacks to make the proverbial quick buck at the expense of someone else’s suffering.
Clearly, the biggest problem is that the government itself has always tried its best to look the other way and ignore this problem. Even after decades of drug proliferation across the country, including schools, there is still no overarching national narrative discouraging parents and their children from going near these things.
Just like the Sindh government, other provinces and the Centre take a second to parrot the old line that everything possible is being done and things will be alright soon enough, etc., and then every time the only change is for the worse.
Surely, it doesn’t take too much to understand that any real change must come right from the top in such cases. If the government puts its foot down, law enforcement agencies will be forced to do a better job than they’ve been doing for the last four decades and schools, too, will have no choice but to pull their socks up. That’s a far better strategy than doing nothing and just pretending and hoping that the problem would go away on its own.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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