Mangaluru: “25% of school going children in Punjab are drug addict. One out of every four children is addicted to Heroin. Heroin, despite of security forces comes from Pakistan. It has become huge epidemic in Punjab, a lucrative business, so much money in this business and the drug battlers go to any extent to push this business to children, and students become their best customers” said Sri Amrith Paul, IGP (Western Range).
He was delivering the key note address after inaugurating the Workshop on Drug Abuse among Children and Forensic Science Exhibition organized by the department of criminology and forensic science, Roshni Nilaya College, in collaboration with the Mangaluru police department.
“Young students don’t know good and bad, and all drug habits come through experiment. Some drugs of so powerful that with one dose will make you high”, he said.
Explaining about the various categories of drugs he said, “There are four types of drugs. Cocaine which is made from plant called coca which is different from cocuva which is used in chocolate. These are grown in Argentina and Brazil, and people made medicine out of it called cocaine, but later it was banned from US market in 1934”.
In India it’s called Opium from Afim a KasKase plant. It’s been used for centuries, later the misuse and abuse of this drug began. But the biggest benefit of any drug given to this world is Opium. A drug called Morphine was derived from Opium, which was a blessing of god, because it was the first pain killer, the general anesthesia. It helped the soldiers who were injured during war.
“This drug not just killed pain, but people started getting high, feeling of euphoria when taken, so the misuse began”, he added.
“Ganja, grass taken from Canapés Plant. Kashish is made from ganja, and the people who consumed were called kashishans, and in English it’s called Assassination”.
“The fourth category is synthetic drugs, artificially made drugs. These drugs are single dependence dose. Once these drugs are taken the person doesn’t want to talk to anybody, anything doesn’t matter, only the drug matters”, he said.
Paul also said that teachers’ role in curbing drug menace is as important as police department’s. “As teachers, a mentor must share a huge responsibility of guiding and telling the children to say no to drugs. There are many videos in the internet made available. Show it to students and make them aware of the consequences. Tea shops, Scrap shops around school and colleges are most likely places where these drugs are available which students will have easy access. So we need to be alert, educate students, and make them aware of the issues, and at the same time inform the police if you find any such activities in public places” he added.
Walter D’Mello, DDPI, DK District, speaking on the issue said, “Earlier, we had a thinking that the drug use were only at college level, but today the students going to school are also become prey to this. It is clearly visible by the students changing behavior, but as many are not aware of this issue why this happen; this orientation workshop program will provide you the teachers more awareness on this serious issue and about how it can be dealt.”
He requested the District SP to organize this awareness workshop to the whole district which has seven taluks comprising one lakh high school students and 2 thousand high school teachers, so if at one or other level this awareness is given we can hope that our district which has a negative image could be reduced from our students becoming a prey to drug addiction and abuse.
Students of forensic department held a demonstration on Drug Addiction and Abuse
‘Crime Reflection’, a book brought out by the department of criminology and forensic science, was released by superintendent of police Dr Sharanappa S D.
An Interactive session by four experts from Law, Legal and Counselling was organized as part of the workshop. Around 140 teachers from various schools of Dakshina Kannada district took part and benefited in this workshop.
Prior to the seminar, the criminology department of Roshni Nilaya organised ‘Forensic Exhibition-2015’ which was inaugurated by IGP Amrit Paul.
Prof B M Madhav, department of research, Principal of Roshni Nilaya College Dr Sophia Fernandes, , Registrar Dr Lakshmi Narayan and others were present.
