An anti-drug strategy and a manual for preschools have been identified as two priorities being worked on by Dominica’s Drug Abuse Prevention Unit.
Unit Head Jacinta Bannis says her agency has been working on the proposed strategy for “several years now” and intends submitting it to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit’s Cabinet by next month.
Bannis says a Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism meeting she attended in Washington examined “various recommendations signed with various countries”.
“So far Dominica complied with one but during the course of the year we will be working on the others. One of the recommendations was to develop an anti-drug policy. We have been working on that for several years now and it’s about time it is submitted to Cabinet.” she said.
The negative impact illegal substances can have on individuals is also about to be explained in the kind of language infants and other young children can easily understand.
“I am also editing a manual for preschools because we find that some teachers are unable to teach the topic for whatever reason,” Bannis said.
The manual is expected to be launched before the new school year that starts in September.
The only system I have seen that has sufficiently curbed the drug problem is an Islamic model state.
No other system has worked on the planet.
Way to go, Ms. Bannis. You have brought a lot to the National Drug Abuse Prevention Unit. Your unit is striving to bring the evils of drug use and abuse to the fore, and you are leading the charge in trying to rid the country of that danger that everybody is seeing but very few want to contribute to the war against it. Great job.
I hope all those anti-drug strategies will also target the pharmacies that sell the expired paracetemol and other medication. I also hope that it will address the situation of the “LEGAL” drugs being thoroughly explained to the patient, cause when you go to buy the medication they take it out of the original pack put it in a little zip lock plastic and just tell you take as prescribed. They don’t give you a headsup on side effects and so on. There should be a policy in place that gives the consumer some rights in knowing exactly what it is that they are taking and why they are taking it. Sometimes you ask the doctors who never give a straight forward answer as if they themselves are not certain but just because so and so used it then it should work. I don’t like that. Not everyone has internet to do look up the meaning and side effects of some of these medications. Teaching the young ones at school about these things would be a plus. My friend child was taking his grandpa prescription medication thinking it’s a sweet.
Excessive use of alcohol and cigarette are just as much drug addiction as MJ. Cocaine is increasing in our system and it’s not the ordinary fella bringing it in…so let’s have all this measures address those from the top to the bottom..bottom usually is the poor sod who end up getting to actually sniff it.