Contraband networks are increasingly targeting educational institutions in the district, luring students initially as users before turning them into carriers.
Realising that enforcement agencies cannot battle the menace alone, the district panchayat in association with the District Child Protection Unit (DCPU) has rolled out a project, Suraksha, in 10 high schools under its jurisdiction on an experimental basis to keep drugs away from campuses by reviving School Protection Groups (SPGs) which are now largely defunct.
“The idea is to stir up a mass people’s movement without which there can be no effective mechanism to prevent the penetration of drugs into schools. Initially, SPGs will be revived after which frequent inspections will be conducted with people’s participation in shops in the vicinity of schools to ensure that they do not deal in drugs,” District Child Protection Officer K.B. Zaina told The Hindu .
Efforts are on to create a network of mentors or informers to alert about potential drug peddling around schools. At present, the Excise and even school counsellors are not included in SPGs, a shortcoming which the DCPU is trying to address.
“Schools are often reluctant to accept the reality of drug menace, prompting us to launch the project. We have already imparted training to school counsellors and convened a meeting of counsellors and head masters. Shortly, school-level awareness sessions will be organised. We are planning to expand it to more schools in due course,” said District Panchayat President Dolly Kuriakose.
A.S. Ranjith, Deputy Excise Commissioner, Ernakulam, said that both school authorities and parents were largely on denial mode when substance abuse by students emerges, while fear of being targeted by youngsters high on drugs also play in the minds of teachers.
“While schools do not want their image to take a hit, parents are obsessively protective of their wards and even put the blame on friends when presented with evidence against their children. Such attempts to sweep the problem under the carpet and protect reputation rather than facing it up front will only explode on their faces a couple of years down the line when the names of those youngsters figure in the media when they get caught for drug abuse,” he added.
Schools often take the easy way out by ousting students found to be using drugs rather than reforming them. There have been at least two such instances where students had to be reinstated after the DCPU intervened.
“There could be more such unknown cases of arbitrary methods of schools owing to the ignorance of parents,” said DCPU sources.
