Stay away from hard drugs

Ghana, like many other countries, is faced with a number of social problems including drug addiction among segments of its people.

Even though drug addiction is often identified with the youth, it is a social problem that can be traced to both the young and the old. It is a social problem that needs to be tackled and eliminated from our society.

People normally keep to the use of drugs when they face certain problems in their lives. Some of the problems are breakages in marriage, leaving the children uncared for, lack of parental control, peer pressure and so on.

When young people are faced with problems in society, they tend to make use of drugs as a way of making them forget about such problems. Unfortunately, the drugs are not able to eliminate the problems and in the process, they tend to go for more of the drugs when they feel that they are now disillusioned.

Some of the hard drugs used are cannabis (wee), cocaine, heroine and many others. In the process, they become used to the drugs in such a way that they now find it difficult to keep away from them.

When this happens, we say that they have reached addiction level.

The effects of these drugs are that they distort the lifestyles of those who use them, making them become violent even in situations where they could have remained calm. This is a dangerous effect that must be eliminated from society.

Among the youth who are addicted to hard drugs, the future is bleak because whatever they do is based on fantasy and excitement but not on their real selves. As a result, many of them keep to social vices such as stealing or armed robbery, rape and general misbehaviour in society.

To solve this problem, parents will have to be more responsible and start the training of these children right from infancy until they reach adulthood. It is also important for parents to keep away from drugs, so as not to tempt their children to go into that negative practice.

We must do our best as a nation to guide the youth to become responsible in behaviour, so that negative peer pressure from any quarters cannot emerge to influence the young ones.

In all, society as a whole must be very vigilant so that we can put an end to this canker in the country. Our youth should not allow drug addiction to sap their energy and ruin their future.