The community event jointly organized by CAD Foundation and Prodigal’s Home under the noble theme ‘Celebrating Life’ addressing the problem of drug abuse confronting Naga society is a step in the right direction. Such kind of social discourse must be encouraged to mobilize drug users, recovering addicts and their families and to acknowledge their effort, determination and success in addressing drug abuse and related problem and how best, others can learn from their experience. The local media has to also remain a responsible partner and work together with other stakeholders and to ensure that the issue of drug addiction is addressed in a humane way.
Collective effort and wisdom is required to address some of the core issues. What we need to focus is on meaningful intervention rather than taking up the impossible task of eliminating the “drug problem”. What is the “drug problem” anyway? Is it just illicit use of drugs listed as dangerous? What of the alcoholics throughout our State- is alcoholism not a “drug problem” only because it is more acceptable? Tobacco, too, is responsible for a vast amount of illness and premature death. Rather we must start addressing these as health issues.
Towards this end, efforts must be made to ensure that the more harmful effects of non-medical drug use is reduced—through “education” and “social action”, such as the community event organized. It is suggested that rather than relying on legal controls to limit this damage, we need to also concentrate on providing reliable information about drugs and their use, responsible use of all drugs and about what to do with casualties (education), and at the same time help provide supportive services to prevent or deal with these casualties (social action).
As far as education is concerned, we need to look at ways to generate awareness through the platform of the media and educational institutions. On its part, the local media has to remain pro-active such as reporting success stories about individuals and their families who have overcome problems associated with drug addiction. Concomitant efforts must be also made to target more specific groups of people who use various drugs in deviant ways—which are to reduce the amount of harm done. However, for this latter group, the local media may not be the best channel to inform and educate. Here NGOs will have a far greater role in disseminating credible information in helping to limit the casualties that arise from drug-use.
It will also be appropriate to raise the issue of how indiscriminate abuse of drugs is a perennial problem that adds on to the HIV/AIDS menace. We must therefore look at ways to develop the right approach to reduce drug demand in a manner that is sustainable and workable in the local context. Reducing drug demand for HIV prevention must remain an important component in the overall strategy to address the problem of HIV/AIDS. Similarly, a drug reduction program should correspondingly have a supply reduction strategy built into the overall intervention program. For a drug reduction program therefore, it as important to address the issue of policing as it should likewise focus on the source of the drug.
