Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Me­dia am­bas­sador for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), ASP Owie Rus­sell, is urg­ing par­ents to keep a close watch on the ac­tiv­i­ties of their chil­dren as he warned that drug use among mi­nors re­mains a ma­jor con­cern.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme last week, Rus­sell high­light­ed the risks of recre­ation­al drug use, not­ing that more po­tent syn­thet­ic drugs such as ec­sta­sy and Mol­ly could have fa­tal con­se­quences.

“I know there may be 16-year-olds who may have writ­ten CXC and may be­lieve ‘I’m an adult now’ and go out there and en­gage in syn­thet­ic drugs now like Mol­ly.

“The pills are a prob­lem be­cause they are small, they can be con­cealed eas­i­ly, and you know... get­ting it is not that hard. It’s some­thing that can be hid­den, and peo­ple and par­ents have to un­der­stand and speak to their chil­dren, be­cause a lot of time it’s peer pres­sure. Don’t let any­one pres­sure you in­to tak­ing any drugs to have a bet­ter time or a great time.

“You may see your friend tak­ing these pills, and it may not have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on them, but it may have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on you.”

When asked if there were any trends in­di­cat­ing that legal­ly pur­chased over-the-counter (OTC) med­ica­tion was be­ing abused by young peo­ple, Rus­sell said while he had heard of such cas­es, he was not aware of the ex­tent to which it was oc­cur­ring.

He al­so urged par­ents to stay in­formed about the lat­est so­cial me­dia trends, warn­ing that some on­line chal­lenges in­volve drug use.

“We ask par­ents to mon­i­tor Tik­Tok be­cause all the chal­lenges come, you would see it on so­cial me­dia.

“There’s one they were do­ing re­cent­ly where the drug makes you hal­lu­ci­nate, and the trick is to see how much you can take to get you to hal­lu­ci­nate, so par­ent­ing is get­ting hard­er by the sec­ond, so it’s for par­ents to show their chil­dren the neg­a­tive ef­fects of these things.

“Not just put the fear in them, but the un­der­stand­ing that you can die.”

Rus­sell’s con­cerns were echoed by Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, who al­so stressed the im­por­tant role par­ents play in pre­vent­ing chil­dren from en­gag­ing in harm­ful be­hav­iours such as drug and al­co­hol abuse.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Bo­doe said the Min­istry was work­ing through the Na­tion­al Al­co­hol and Drug Abuse Pre­ven­tion Pro­gramme (NADAPP) to help pre­vent ad­dic­tion among young peo­ple.

“Pre­vent­ing sub­stance mis­use is a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and to­geth­er we can help our young peo­ple make healthy choic­es.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Na­tion­al Al­co­hol Pol­i­cy is al­so near­ing com­ple­tion. The pol­i­cy out­lines a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to re­duc­ing the harm­ful use of al­co­hol through ev­i­dence-based in­ter­ven­tions fo­cused on pre­ven­tion, pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, part­ner­ships, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, re­search and sur­veil­lance and the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of re­sources.

“It’s over­ar­ch­ing goal is to min­imise the health and so­cial harms as­so­ci­at­ed with al­co­hol use while prompt­ing health­i­er be­hav­iours across the pop­u­la­tion.”

Asked whether he was con­cerned about the po­ten­tial abuse of OTC med­ica­tion, Bo­doe said there was no sta­tis­ti­cal ev­i­dence to sug­gest it was a grow­ing trend, but said such con­cerns were be­ing ad­dressed through ro­bust pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns.

“Our fo­cus is on pre­ven­tion through ed­u­ca­tion, ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment to re­duce the risk be­fore it be­comes a larg­er prob­lem.

“Con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al ev­i­dence-based pre­ven­tion stan­dards, the Min­istry’s ap­proach fo­cus­es on strength­en­ing pro­tec­tive fac­tors and re­duc­ing risk fac­tors by build­ing in­di­vid­ual skills and fos­ter­ing sup­port­ive fam­i­ly, school and com­mu­ni­ty en­vi­ron­ments that pro­mote healthy de­vel­op­ment and pre­vent sub­stance use.”

Asked whether ad­di­tion­al safe­guards could be in­tro­duced to pre­vent the abuse of OTC med­ica­tion while en­sur­ing pa­tients con­tin­ued to have ac­cess to nec­es­sary treat­ment, Bo­doe said the Health Min­istry’s poli­cies were con­stant­ly re­viewed to en­sure phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals were is­sued re­spon­si­bly.

“We must strike the right bal­ance, en­sur­ing that pa­tients who gen­uine­ly need med­ica­tion con­tin­ue to have ac­cess, while strength­en­ing pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, re­spon­si­ble pre­scrib­ing prac­tices and sur­veil­lance to min­imise the risk of mis­use.

“The Min­istry con­tin­ues to en­gage in pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives in var­i­ous schools, com­mu­ni­ties and work­places.”

Bo­doe al­so an­nounced that the Min­istry was work­ing to­wards a na­tion­al­ly co­or­di­nat­ed roll­out of Project To­wards No Drug Abuse (TND), a drug pre­ven­tion pro­gramme that seeks to train pro­fes­sion­als across the health, ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty sec­tors to de­liv­er an ev­i­dence-based drug pre­ven­tion pro­gramme to ado­les­cents.