Dear Editor,
Eric Khadaroo’s letter on drug use at No. 78 Village (Stabroek News, April 19) should not go unsupported or be just another contribution to the letter columns.
Narco use among teenagers is a plague in our society and it has severe and deleterious spin-offs: pornography, HIV/AIDS, Larceny, Prostitution, and it gets worse.
Eric lamented the perception that “another person’s child is not one’s business and they should stay out”. Sadly, many older and concerned folks are forced to “stay out” of other people’s business. Many parents simply do not want anyone even suggesting that their children are indisciplined or are involved in “bad things”. There is that state of denial by today’s parents. Thus the days when the children of a village were everybody’s children have been driven away by the village itself.
At one of the forums on which I serve, I represented that the laws be amended to have parents charged along with their delinquent juvenile children. Some persons thought I was being harsh. Eric’s letter reveals what is truly harsh: 14 year olds in drugs, prostitution, stealing, etc.
Why shouldn’t parents be brought to book?
Poverty is the fall guy for all ills. How convenient! But it is not only children of poor parents who fall prey to drugs, etc. So, to blame poverty is a cop out.
How many of us were not born in dirt poor homes and have used our poverty to motivate us to be better? Our parents ensured that they were in control of our teenage years: You obey or else.
The good book says: Spare the rod and spoil the child
.
Corporal punishment in school has been successfully campaigned against and in its wake we now have drugs and weapons in school and security guards at the gate and teachers working in fear; thanks to the parents and the pseudo psychologists who would argue that a few lashes would mark the children for life!
Aren’t they being marked for life by drugs and sex and STDs? What are those parents and pseudo psychologists doing about it?
This Nation has to re-cultivate the will to take back our society from the irresponsible and the criminal. If there is that intent, it is mute and hushed. The education system must be more robust in its approach to discipline; the judiciary must be tougher against crimes; the Police need to understand their role in society; the churches must focus on the flock itself rather than on the contributions of the flock, and parents must be held responsible for the actions on their children.
As a community activist I am advocating an aggressive (and perhaps unpleasant) approach to the above. Politically correct and “enlightened” pussy-footing has brought us to where we are. We cannot continue in that vein or the lawless will rule.
Let those who are as worried and scared as Eric and myself come into the open. Together we can beat this epidemic.
Yours faithfully,
T. Jadunauth
