There are some things about the proliferation of reports regarding the presence of narcotics (latterly it is the drug ecstasy that has been ‘making the running,’ so to speak) in schools that are deeply troubling. Up until now, the presumed lead agencies on the problem, not least the Ministry of Education and the Police, still appear to have relatively little knowledge of the extent of the drug’s invasion of the school system and have not, insofar as we are aware, devised any clear cut strategy for rolling back the menace. Nor is there, again as far as we know, any ongoing research into the impact, if any, of ecstasy’s behaviour-altering effects on the young users after they exit the school system. Is there a threat of longer-term addiction, for example? Are we in danger of having to deal with many more mal-adjusted young adults, down the road?
There are other concerns too – like the strong suspicion that the authorities are not winning the war, that the targeting of schools as markets for ecstasy has become integrated into the wider drug trade that has long included the peddling of marijuana in some schools. The recent jailing of a 20-year-old ‘student’ for possession of ecstasy and the instance of a schoolgirl taking her own life in what was reported as a drugs-related case help make the case for the gravity of the situation.
Then there was the very recent revelation by Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan regarding the likelihood that some “school officials” may be mixed up in drug peddling. “We have to talk to some of these school officials too because we believe that the culprits are within those schools. It is very difficult to identify them but we have some suspects,” is what Mr. Ramjattan is reported to have said to the media. Could this mean that some of our most important ‘foot soldiers’ in the fight against drugs in schools have been ‘turned’ by the drug dealers?
From what we know of ecstasy, its dangers derive from its ability to induce both stimulant and hallucinogenic effects that trigger “sensations of distorted reality,” its potency becoming enhanced when used with other drugs. Ecstasy is reportedly popular at ‘wild’ parties and Nightclubs and is believed to be a ‘recreational ‘tool’ in private homes and institutions of learning. Where our schools are concerned what makes the proliferation of ecstasy a matter of particular concern is the range of irresponsible behavioral patterns that the drug is capable of inducing, including a combination of diminished inhibitions and heightened sexuality and sexual arousal. The knock-on effects of these are patently self-evident.
CANU’s decision to use the occasion of last week’s commissioning of its new headquarters to ‘go public’ on the persistence of the presence of ecstasy in schools, is instructive. It should, we believe, be seen as a signal that the battle to remove ecstasy from our schools is now enjoined and that up until now it may be the ‘pushers’ and users who hold sway. It is a blunt message, we believe, to the key stakeholders in the fight against ecstasy in schools, the Ministry of Education, law enforcement, parents and school officials, that the various official pronouncements on the matter of drugs in schools are leading nowhere since they are not matched by any discernable practical follow-up action that seeks in any determined way to roll back the tide of the drug threat to the integrity of our school system
Contemporary media reporting on the presence of ecstasy in schools has assumed a sort of ebb and flow pattern. Reporting is confined largely to specific incidents, including drug finds and some details of police investigations. For a host of reasons, however, not least the difficulties involved in securing sustained follow-up information, reporting is sporadic rather than sustained. In the instance of the Ministry of Education we have said before that it is not the most helpful institution as far as providing the media with information on the issue of drugs in schools is concerned. What this means is that public discourse stops at the point where the critical institutions fall silent. Once media reporting stops people are left largely in the dark. This has become a well-established pattern. Each ecstasy-related disclosure is followed by a brief flurry of media reporting and another round of official undertakings that predictably go nowhere. The pattern, frankly, has become irritatingly predictable and it is little wonder that public opinion has long held that on matters like policies aimed at rolling back the presence of drugs in schools the authorities are simply ‘not serious.’
If those responsible have not yet gotten the message that the dichotomy between the high-sounding promises, on the one hand and the absence of serious follow-through, on the other, has lost all traction with the public then they must surely be reliving the well-known fairy tale of the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes.’ Where the issue of ecstasy (and drugs on the whole) in schools is concerned, the time for gaff has long passed and gone.
Mind you, it is true that no individual agency can, alone, be held responsible for ridding our schools of the ecstasy challenge. There are, however, lead agencies, and lead agencies must lead!
Parents can contribute to the fight against ecstasy in schools by ensuring, first, that their own homes do not provide an enabling environment through which their own children can become substantive drug dealers. Here, it is really a matter of leading by example. At the broader institutional level, discourses on strategies for ecstasy-free schools can be based on knowledge and experience. Here, a sharing of information between school administrators and parents can contribute to the creation of strategy-forming recommendations that can then be passed on to schools and law enforcement to support their own rule-making and policing initiatives.
It is, however, the Ministry of Education, we believe, that must galvanize the key stakeholders: (to employ a much over-used cliché) teachers and other school administrators, school boards, PTA’s, prefect bodies and social organizations into think-tanks specifically designed to generate ideas for crystallization into policy. All of this is really being said to say that the time is long overdue for the emergence of clear and coordinated strategies that match the gravity of the ecstasy menace.
Serious corrective action will not derive from the pointless restating of the problem and a predictable but ultimately meaningless repetition of an undertaking to find solutions. Where, we ask, are those collaborative fora, those in-school sensitization sessions, ‘policing’ regimes in schools across the country, drug-detection training for school administrators and PTA and School Board-driven recommendations aimed at pushing back both the substantive drug pushers, isolating the child ‘mules,’ and insofar as they exist, ferretting out the adult pushers and prosecuting them. All of these strategies lie within the power of the Ministry of Education and the Police, jointly. In the absence of these the system will remain frail and vulnerable. High-sounding undertakings in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of ecstasy (or marijuana) in once school or another is no more than an exercise of unpardonable deception. Remedies will not materialise out of whistling in the wind.
