Anti Drug Abuse Day
Drug Dependence Behaviour Among Youth

By Dr. Niranjan Prasad Upadhyay

DRUG dependence is not a crime but a disease. A drug-using behaviour may meet the criteria for dependence but may not cause a significant medical or social problem. More commonly, compulsive use of drugs is detrimental both to the user and to the society. Dependency is a biochemical or genetic disorder that is activated by the individual’s environment.

His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, Ministry of Home Affairs Narcotic Drug Control Division (2000) introduces Narcotic Bulletin. In the Bulletin, it is stressed that drug abuse in Nepal started in mid 60s. This period was the peak time of Hippies in the world, especially in western societies and Nepal was newly opened for outsiders. Many Hippies invaded Nepal very shortly because of the availability of quality drugs in the country without any intervention by the administration. It helped to spread the use of drugs in wide range in the country.

Drug dependence seems to be more prevalent in youth’s circle. In Nepal older as well as younger generations use drugs to lessen their anxiety and strain. There is no age discrimination. Today, it has become a worldwide problem. No specific psychological or physical profile will identify the drug users. Experimentation with drugs persists the habit of drug dependency.

Drug use by youth has become of great concern to the society. It raises various problems, they are: developmental risks, toxic effects, impairment of motor functions, the potential for physical or psychological dependence, the long-term psychological and emotional effects of addiction and behavioural difficulties.

Non-medical use involves the experimental use of a drug on one or a few occasions, because of curiosity about its impact on the human organism, or to comply with the expectations of a peer group. It may involve the casual or recreational use of small amounts of a drug for its pleasurable effects, or use in a certain circumstances, such as stimulants to alleviate fatigue. These various forms of non-medical use may then lead to serious drug abuse resulting in dependence or compulsive drug use.

One of the hazards of compulsive drug use is that it may foster drug dependence. Users continue to take drugs, often despite adverse social and medical consequences, and they behave as if the effects of the drugs are needed for continued well-being. The magnitude of this need or dependence can vary from a mild desire to a craving or compulsion to use the drug. When the availability of the drug is uncertain, they may exhibit a preoccupation with locating sources for the contraband.

Mental health researchers stress the diversified effects of drug abuse i.e. psychological and physical damage, strained interpersonal relationships, promotion of crime, increased health costs, usurpring of youth promotion of anti-social behaviour, loss of work and promotes disease.

There are several grounds for concern about drug use by children and adolescents. All psychoactive drugs have acute effects on mood, concentration and cognitive functioning. They can impair memory and hence interfere with intellectual and emotional development. The most favoured targets of traffickers are young people because they are the most easily tricked into using drugs. It is the young who are most at risk, especially those in their teens. They are less accepting of parental control and values; they are beginning to assert their own individuality; and they are learning to cope with the balance between freedom and responsibility. The assertion of individually is usually accompanied by a desire to look and behave like other teenagers in their age group, in their choice of clothes, hairstyles and makeup, and which rock groups they listen to.

School environments may be dangerous for certain students. Large schools with crowded, impersonal surroundings, can leave the student lost in his or her surroundings, only being noticed by school authorities because of either excellence or inferiority in performance. In such surroundings, unsuitable friendships and liaisons can be established. Pupils on the lookout for drug customers to subsidise their own habit, or just looking to make money can take advantage of the naive, the lonely and those under physical or psychological stress.

Life is a continuous cycle of "panic" revolving around the need to get enough money to obtain the drug of choice, to take it for a brief period of comparative satisfaction, before beginning against the frantic search for the money to buy more drugs. It is necessary, therefore, to consider the more deeply rooted factors that play a part in causing individuals of all backgrounds to turn to drug abuse.

Mental health researchers pinpoint some basic factors that play a part in causing individuals of all backgrounds to turn to drug abuse. In this perspective, loneliness, lack of parental concern, lack of companionship, growing up without adequate supervision and discipline, lack of moral or religious teaching, promotion of cynicism by the media and entertainment industry, hatred of authority, discipline, or parental control, erosion of self respect, glamour, danger and high risks, peer pressure, curiosity, showing off, emotional problems, and family problems and social problems are mostly found.

Furthermore, at home the addicted youths’ behaviour seem to be odd and consequently they show a varieties of direct or indirect activities like money and easily sold goods such as tape recorders and jewelry start disappearing from the house, greater absenteeism from the home, dropping out of extra-curricular activities previously enjoyed, carelessness about appearance, unusual displays of temper frequently without cause (sudden mood swings), lack of appetite, excused by claims of dieting, wearing sunglasses at unusual times, usually to hide dilated or contracted pupils and wearing long sleeved shirts at unusual times.

Government of Nepal is coordinating with NGOs pertaining to drug abuse control. In fact, Nepalese NGOs are involved mainly in two types of works i.e. treatment and rehabilitation and working in prevention field. In the course of controlling drug abuse, awareness-raising programmes are more beneficial for imparting knowledge on adverse effects of drug dependence.

Solving Environmental Problem

By Sanu Maiya Pradhan

IT is not possible for human being to survive without living in harmony with nature. All the living creatures on earth play their own role It is human beings who have played havoc with the environment for selfish gains being indifferent to the fact that all the flora and found too have their own contributions to making the planet what it is. Man is to be blamed for the ills that the environment is facing today. With the population pressure the environment has been affected.

Vital

The role of the different animals and plants is very vital if we are to survive. Birds play an important role in the ecosystem. They help pollination, eat hamful insects and help the farmers. Rapid urbanisation process and widespread use of pesticides and insecticides have threatened the existence of many beautiful birds. It is not an unknown fact that all animals and plants including the human beings are interlinked not only through the food chain but in other ways as well. But human activities that lead to deforestation, indiscriminate poaching and so on have created a problem with a huge dimension. Pollution of the air and water and global warming have signaled that the bio-diversity is under threat now as never befor. With 1130 of the more than 4000 mammal species and 1183 of the 10,000 birds are regarded as globally threatened. Among the most critically threatened are black rhinoceros of Africa, the Siberian tiger and three Amur leopard of Asia, according to the UN’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

Much of the threat is man made with the loss of habitat from industry mining and farming and the introduction of non-native species in many parts of the world. Fifteen per cent of the world’s land has been degraded by human activity such as over grazing, while half the world’s rivers are seriously depleted or polluted.

It is warned that roads, mining and other infrastructure developments could affect over 70 per cent of the world’s suface in the next 30 years. In addition, almost one-third of the World’s fish stocks are ranked as depleted and over exploited a result of our fishing. Some 40 per cent of the people suffered serious water shortages in the mid 1990s, and 1.1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water in the world.

Weather-related hazards such as cyclones droughts and floods appear to be increasing in strength and frequency and are affecting more people, 211 million a year it the 1990s compared with 147 million in the 1980s. Some attribute the increase to globla warming.

The depletion of the ozone layer has reached record levels, with the ozone hole over Antarctica covering more than 28 million square kilometres in September 2000.

Along with escalating growth in population, water use has grown six fold over the past 70 years. In developing countries, 90-95 per cent of sewage and 70 per cent of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into surface water.

A child born today in an industrialised country will add to more consumption and pollution over his or her lifetime than 30 to 50 children born in the developing countries. Nearly 60 per cent of the people in the developing countries lack basic sanitation facilities. Every day about 160,000 people move from rural to urban areas. From 20 to 25 per cent of rural deaths worldwide are caused due to environmental conditions which contribute to communicable diseases. Diseases associated with clean water and poor sanitation kill over 12 million people each year while air pollution kills nearly 3 million people a year.

Nepal constitutes only 0.1 per cent of total land area of the world. About 6500 species of vascular plants, 630 species of medicinal plants, 370 species of flowering plants 175 species of mamal, 858 species of birds, 635 butterflies 687 species of alagae, 185 species of fishes, 5059 species of insects, 144 species of speders, 1882 species of fungi and many other plants and animal species are recorded to be found in Nepal. Nepal lies in 25th position in biodiversity.

It took more than 60 years to double Nepal’s population from 5.5 million to 11.6 (from 1911 to 1971), and now only about 30 years from 11.6 to 24 million in 2001.

Due to the increased population pressure, marginal lands have been brought into cultivation, the fragile ecosystem is being disturbed and there are signs of desertification while the midhills and the Terai are probe to landslids, floods and a host of other man-made disarters. Unplanned and rampant urbanisation in Kathmandu Valley and other parts of the Kingdom have caused a major environmental degradation. The people are the most vulnerable to devasting effects of the degradation that is taking place in the environment. Nepla faces deforestation and soil, degradation the two problems that 88 per cent of the total population of rural Nepal face. These two issues affect the living standard of mountain people in Nepal, livelihoods, food security and health of biodiversity. United Nations Environment Project (UNEP) brought an alarming report that 20 glacial lakes in Nepal could burst in the next five to ten years.

The problem of environment is not specific to any particular place, individual or country and what is required is group effort at international level to bring about a pollution free environment.

The environment is a self regenerating process Human activities should be conducted such a way that will not disturb nature’s balance. Man seeks progress and development but these are goals that can be realised through nature itself. Misuse of nature in the name of development is another cause of environmental degradation.

Real Problem

Efforts at lasting development which balances with environment should be worldwide and this requires that developed countries refrain from excessive exploitation and consumption of natural resources and developing countries stop imitating western life styles. A given law is enacted in response to some real problem but the law itself is not the solution.

Scientists Beating Pacific Version Of Irish Potato Blight

PLANT scientists believe they are close to defeating a disease which a decade
ago nearly crippled the nation of Samoa and still threatens the Pacific’s vital taro plantations.

Brought by migrants from Southeast Asia, taro (colocasia esculenta) is a revered staple across the region, where it is given almost mystical powers.

Rugby players call it "Pacific steroids" and for many Pacific countries it is a key export.

But in 1993 taro leaf blight arrived in Samoa.

"I was in Samoa in 1993 and the impact there was just amazing," Danny Hunter of the Taro Genetic Resources Conservation and Utilisation project (TaroGen) said.

"It virtually wiped out the taro plantations overnight" by melting the plant.

Part of the multi-national South Pacific Community and funded by Australia, TaroGen is now trying to develop a blight-resistant taro before the disease spreads across the Pacific.

Available all year round, taro is considered a great subsistence crop by farmers and more recently has developed into a major export.

Fiji, which has so far been disease-free, picked up many of Samoa’s export markets after 1993, but Hunter worries that the blight is spreading and Fiji’s vulnerable crops could be next in line.

"The taro plant has evolved without any of these diseases being present so it is very susceptible and when the disease does strike it is very devastating," he said.

The blight is now in both Samoas, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and TaroGen warns that other Pacific countries need to switch to its new resistant-variety if they are to avoid similar fates.

Hunter said TaroGen has had some success with a new breed that resists the disease and can cope with its presence.

"If you look at the situation in Samoa, the number of growers, the number of farmers starting to produce taro again has increased quite substantially so the local market has recovered to what it was like in 1993. The export market has still got a long way to go."

According to Hunter the disease started somewhere in Southeast Asia and while taro was brought to the Paacific, the disease was not, leaving the region’s crops vulnerable.

"All the traditional varieties in the Pacific are very vulnerable but when you go to the Asian countries where the disease is widespread, it is not considered so important because the plant has been able to keep up with the disease in terms of resistance," Hunter said.

How the blight got to the modern Pacific is a mystery.

At the start of the Samoa blight, then-agriculture minister Misa Telefoni, now deputy prime minister, accused rice importers of industrial espionage.

"There is an obvious benefit for the rice importers and I watched the situation very closely and rice imports rose immediately," he said.

The blight came for Samoa on the heels of two very damaging cyclones; the country is only now recovering from the triple whammy.

During the disaster then-New Zealand prime minister Jim Bolger said he understood the fear of Samoa and the Pacific over the disease.

"I come from a people that suffered the same problem — I’m 100 per cent Irish."

The disease is a close relative of the pathogen which caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s.

(AFP)