Illicit drugs and schoolchildren: Immediate need for effective corrective action - I

by Chandra Wickramasinghe-February 25, 2016

(Former Council Member of the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board)

It is common knowledge that certain illicit hallucinogenic drugs like ‘Ecstasy’ are being used by young people belonging to the upper classes at fashionable house parties, perhaps unbeknown to their high society parents. There were also a few newspaper reports about children attending tuition classes being introduced to such drugs. However, it was indeed shocking to read newspaper reports a couple of days ago, about a school boy smuggling heroin in his underwear and distributing it to his schoolmates! This is indeed a frightening indication that the clandestine, illicit networks are getting organized to capture a potentially lucrative market represented by schoolchildren country wide. Heroin, as readers may know, is the most dangerous and harmful in the range of illicit drugs available in Sri Lanka, as it is highly addictive and makes its victims totally and helplessly dependent on the drug.

It is indeed sad if not tragic, that despite the corrosive and devastating social effects of illicit drugs, successive administrations have not had the required political resolve and the unswerving commitment (with all the solemn pledges and hard resolutions made), to launch a sustained frontal onslaught on the organized purveyors of these illicit substances whose horrific impact is increasingly felt on the physical as well as the economic well being of the people of this country. Newspapers carry reports regularly of traffickers of heroin being nabbed and charged. The punishment laid down in the law for such offenders, is death! One often wonders what happens to the innumerable small time drug dealers who are charged in Court for being in possession of heroin. Are they being kept in remand prison over extended periods till their cases are finalised? About ten years ago around 55 per cent of the inmates in Remand Prison were being held for drug related offences. By now, if all the nabbed offenders have been incarcerated, the Remand Prisons must be overflowing with such offenders with many awaiting trial, knowing well the laws inordinate delays!

It was made out that the apprehension of notorious drug dealer Wele Suda would deal a body blow to the illicit drug trade here as he was reputedly a king pin in these illicit drug operations. It was also reported the he had given a list of thirty two names of powerful and influential people, which had included a fair number of MPP and even Ministers! It was also triumphantly claimed that the concerned authorities were in possession of the said list! However, this much awaited list never saw the light of day! But speculation was rife as to who and who were in the list. This sordid episode sheds a lot of light on the highly selective manner in which law enforcement operates in the island.

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