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| Sunday, 09 March 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Youthful drug addicts: More sinned against than sinning? by Jayanthi Liyanage Esme (not her real name) is just 25. Educated at a leading school in Colombo, she is pretty, extrovert and conveys the impression of a smart personality to the one who listens to her organised chatter.
Just a moment ago, harmonising rhythmical movements with two of her colleagues, she entertained us with her dancing abilities. "Now," she concedes, "I am almost okay." Breaking into a friendly smile from where she is seated, in the new Drug Rehabilitation Unit at the Welikada Prison Magazine premises which was declared open just minutes before by the Lion's Club of Colombo Orient 306 B. What was her undoing which put such a vivacious young woman behind bars? "I was hooked onto drugs at the age of 16, without my even knowing it," recalls Esme. "My mother's sister's son introduced it to me in a cigarette and I smoked it with scarcely any idea that it contained heroin." When Esme first felt signs of addiction, she thought they were brought on by nicotine. Then her cousin disclosed to her the deadly game he had been playing with the cigarettes. But, unfortunately, by then, she was too deeply hooked to get out. Then came a day when she had no way of obtaining heroin, and going through a bad bout of sickness symptoms, her mother had to take her to the doctor. "He guessed what was wrong and when I came home, I blurted out everything to my mother," says Esme, adding that from then on her mother dragged her to all the conceivable local institutions which could offer the hope of rehabilitating her and failed. "That's how I happened to come to Welikada." Esme is just one among the 42 per cent, comprising drug addicts, out of an estimated prison detainee population of 20,000, of which, except for a mere 5,000 convicted, the rest are suspects or remandees, as affirmed by M.P. Sarathchandra, Superintendent of Prisons. "These remandees have to wait a long time till their cases are taken up," points out Lion Dr. M. Fahmy Ismail. "And many of the drug addicts are young people of 16-40 age group with very little primary education and almost illiterate." "Drug addicts mostly enter the prison as suspects," explains Sarathchandra, adding, "The rehabilitation process becomes a success if begun no sooner than the addiction symptoms appear. If the intention of a prison is to produce law-abiding citizens for re-infusion into society, the prison has an obligation to commence treatment no sooner than the detainee addicts come in, to ensure that they return to society in sound social health when released from custody." Adhering to Sarathchandra's credo that it is crucially important for civil society organizations to give a hand in prisoner development as the prison produce is poured back into society, Lion's Club of Colombo Orient 306 B established a Drug Rehabilitation Centre at the Magazine Prison. The Club furnished the Unit with furniture, recreational and exercising equipment for its different segments demarcated for rehabilitation sessions and recreational programmes. To ensure the sustainability of the Lion Project, co-operation has come from the private sector, adds Dr. Ismail, "Abans donated us a large television set and Multilac, paint for the Unit. Our project aims at separating the drug addicts from other detainees to prevent the spread of the habit. Rehabilitation will ensure that they are no longer rejects of society and become comfortable re-integrating with it." |
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