Education Calls for Amendment of Drug Policy Use and Abuse
The drug policy needs to be amended to capture the new types of drugs entering the country and used or abused by the students. Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Education, Heritage and Arts, Alison Burchell made this suggestion to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education yesterday. The committee had asked her what has been the major challenge in the implementation of the relevant legislation and policies considering the continuous increase in drug and substance abuse among students. Ms Burchell said apart from the need to amend the drug policy, the disciplinary procedures in place were not effective to change student attitudes.
“The Policy Unit will be reviewing the drug policy and include relevant sections that can address these gaps,” she said.
“The enforcement of policy at school level needs to be strengthened and the Substance Abuse Advisory Council whenever visiting schools, creates awareness on the drug policy for better understanding.
“There are many cases from schools on
inhalant abuse. SAAC has developed the Volatile Substance Abuse Draft Law and is currently with the Solicitor General for final vetting before taken to Cabinet and Parliament.
“This law will restrict the sale of inhalants to students and penalise retailers who deliberately sell them to students.” The committee also asked if there was a database on drug and substance abuse with the ministry and how was the data used to address this problem. Ms Burchell said the ministry collects data and SAAC had its own database where data on drug and substance use and abuse from schools was collected.
“The data is used to identify schools with high cases of drugs,” Ms Burchell said. “Training programmes are prepared where teachers and students attend and are empowered with knowledge and skills on how to address the substance abuse and other social issues in schools.
“The data collected also helps in identifying cases from schools that require intervention in terms of counselling support for both legal and illegal drugs.”