IEP holds Alcohol and Drug Awareness week

 The La Romaine Integrated Education Project (IEP) of Servol and the Ministry of Education held its annual Alcohol and Drug Awareness Week from November 14-18. Minister of Community Development Nizam Baksh was present, at the official opening, to lend his support to the awareness week, which he noted had been going on since 1998. “We all have a role to play in ridding our society of substance abuse,” the Minister stated during his feature address. “Government alone cannot solve this problem,” he said. “As for peer pressure,” he advised students from Servol, San Fernando East Secondary School and Asja Boys College, San Fernando, “this is your moment to be strong and to show your strength.  Be your own person. “Peer pressure is strong, but you are stronger. And as a means to solve problems, drugs do not solve problems. They make them worse,” he told students. “Many adults and young people think that these temptations will come from friends, but statistically, more relatives and parents condone young people’s first exposure to alcohol and drugs,” Minister Baksh disclosed. He advised students that whether they were with family or friends, they should make and keep a strong commitment to staying drug free for life. He commended the IEP for successfully sensitising students and teachers to the dangers of substance abuse for the past 14 years. He said the awareness week was very timely, because the upcoming seasons of Christmas and Carnival lent themselves to an increase in substance abuse nationwide. He pledged to help take the awareness week to all the educational districts of T&T by next year. “Together, we need to sensitise as many young people as possible about the importance of living healthy lifestyles,” he said

He challenged teachers during his feature address to work with their students to come up with new initiatives to continue and strengthen drug sensitisation efforts. He also called on all teachers to talk to their students frequently about drug prevention and treatment. “The Ministry of Community Development’s NADAPP is here to help with your efforts through our programmes such as the Drug Prevention Initiatives, Community Outreach, and Drug Education Lectures,” he assured teachers. He urged them to tackle the issue of substance abuse as if these children were their own. He stated that as long as he was Minister of Community Development, drug prevention initiatives by teachers would receive his unstinted support. Mt Hope dentistry student, Tricia Balram, who was one of Hillview College’s Open Scholarship Winners this year, stated that as a young woman with a fair level of social interaction, she found it very interesting how drug use, including alcohol, was packaged to appeal to our social graces, as “the right thing to do” or “a good thing to do. “Yet,” she added, “with all its glorified status, drug use cannot replace the loss of a single life, be it a relative, friend or someone distant from our social circle. “It’s most important therefore that we continue to sensitise our young people on the dangers of drug use through programmes similar to the IEP’s Drug Awareness Week,” she told the large audience, adding that it was also appropriate that all our academic institutions have an effective drug awareness programme and that the media continued to inform the general public of the immense damages of drug use and abuse to our society.