DRUGS THE PUBLIC ENEMY

 DRUGS THE PUBLIC ENEMY

Written by Mbibi Longinus Chinagorom/mbibilonginuschinagorom@gmail.com

I didn't want to write this article because of the incredible pressure on our youth to try drugs and alcohol but I did.

The public enemy called 'drugs' in our tertiary institutions and country seem to be overlooked which have been a generation pain that brings untimely death; cut off future purposes;  and rubbishing destinies of the young people thereby intensifying more pains from one generation to another.

Thus there is an overwhelming amount of our youth who will experiment with these substances. Worse yet, many of these people and their families will suffer greatly from addiction and other traumas that go along with substance abuse.

Imagine a young 17 year old boy or girl with everything going for him or her. However, by the time he or she graduates from university the chances of taking drugs in high quantity is so alarming and worrisome.

Oftentimes, some of the young people will try something sometime, but what is the thing that ultimately hooks them? Unfortunately illicit drugs. These drugs have two basic qualities that are terribly appealing. One, drugs make them feel good and high. Young people are moving from childhood to adulthood. Their bodies, minds, friendships and spiritual lives are changing so rapidly they are often bored, confused, lonely, alienated or just plain unhappy. For those who don't cope well with all the pressures, the substance dulls their pain. It is for a false sense of relief, but nevertheless they feel better and life can go on.

Young people are living in emotional pain and they want relief, but instead of finding real relief, they become addicted. Drugs are so appealing, is that young people believe that they work every time. To them, drugs and alcohol are dependable and family and friends unfortunately are not. The kids are worried about family struggles, grades, loss of a breadwinner or whatever. They count on the drugs or alcohol, to make the hurt go away temporarily.

To make it more worse, the slick marketing of wine coolers with high alcohol content is becoming the drug choice of many young teens. Disguising their products as something helpful but not. Each day this epidemic robs us of lives that would otherwise make a difference in this world. People who run new companies, invent new useful products and care for the needy are destroyed daily. With a push of a needle, a snort up the nose or a wild drive by an intoxicated boy, drugs steal our nation's future.

However, the tragedy in our country is that we are doing too little too late. Neither the Government nor the Private sectors have done enough to reduce the demand of drugs to get them out of our tertiary institutions and country as a whole.

As a result of these drugs, young drug users divorce more quickly, suffer from greater job instability, commit more serious crimes and are generally more unhappy with their lives and relationships than others. We are setting up a generation of young people who will fail in their personal and professional lives. Generally, young people are more prone to abuse drugs if their parents - smoke cigarettes, abuse alcohol or alcoholics, take illicit drugs, use any substance to help master stress and impart a positive attitude towards illegal drugs.

We are calling on Government and Private sectors to urgently do something to curb these menace in our tertiary institutions and society as large.