The Head of Education at Narcotics Control Commission in the Northern Region, Prudence Yaro has advised parents to try and devote quality time out of their busy schedules for their children. According to her, quality parenting is a major responsibility of every parent and life would be meaningless if parents get every wealth on earth but have their children going wayward.
Speaking on Tamale-based Neesim radio, Madam Yaro said parents should become friends to their children and always try to spend at least 30 minutes with them after every day’s work to listen to whatever issues they have regarding their Education, Friends and the Society.
Again, she cautions parents to be very vigilant in tracing to know how their children spend monies taken from them and other relatives especially in the case of students as some children take advantage of that to acquire hard substances and begin to abuse them by peer influence.
She encouraged parents to always be observant and alert on some actions such as secretiveness, possession of high scented perfumes, avoiding of people, poor personal hygiene and the like on the part of their children as these may be some symptoms and features of Substance abusers/addicts.
According to Madam Yaro, if parents have such attention for their children, drug/substance abuse in the society would be minimized.
She further cautioned parents or adults who smoke, take alcohol or any substance to desist from engaging or sending children to buy these things for them since that may influence them into substance abuse.
To the Society, she said the fight against drug abuse should be a collective responsibility and not only for Narcotics Control Commission because regrettable situations like road accidents, robberies that are mostly caused by drug abusers affect everybody in society.
She reminded those who are into illegal production or drug peddling to desist from that since the laws of the commission would accordingly deal mercilessly with them if they are caught.
Madam Prudence Yaro in a word of advice to Drug Addicts stated that, such people should never feel all is over in coming out of their situations since the Narcotic Control Commission is willing to offer support and counselling services to them and also help them integrate well in the Society.
As part of the Commission’s Core Mandate to Society, Madam Yaro mentioned that, it has always been their effort to get the Society educated on the harmful effects of drugs abuse through radio and television panel discussions, photo exhibition, visiting of schools, mosques, churches and organizing Community durbars.
According to her, the Commission also has enforcement and control units across the country and offices at the various borders of the country to ensure legal import and export of drugs.
The Commission also has Treatment, Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration Units who also identify drug addicts or receives reports on drug addicts from institutions such as Schools and offer them counselling services and upon the Commission’s satisfaction, they are sent and reintegrated into the Society.
Source: A1 Radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Solomon Azimah|Ghana
