RIYADH, 11 May 2008 — The National Society for Human Rights has urged officials to take urgent steps to save more than 900 children between 7 and 18 currently in juvenile homes across the Kingdom on drug related charges.
There are 280 youngsters in juvenile homes in Jizan, 216 in Riyadh, 213 in Jeddah and nine in Hail.
As part of efforts to prevent drug addiction, the Ministry of Interior and the General Directorate for Combating Drugs have developed a school program. The program, which aims to educate students about the harmful effects of drugs, is expected to be implemented in all academic levels starting next year.
Meanwhile, the General Directorate for Combating Drugs and the Department of Students Supervision and Administration in the Riyadh region yesterday launched a four-day workshop under the theme “Our Children Away from Drugs”.
The workshop, which targets social workers and supervisors in the educational field, aims to develop methods to educate primary school students about drugs. On the first day of the workshop, social researcher Awatif Al-Duraibi spoke about drug addiction and exhibited all types of drugs, while discussing their usage and effects.
Al-Duraibi said poverty, bad company and parents who are addicts themselves are some of the factors that lead children to becoming addicts.
Fawzya Al-Bakr, associate lecturer at the King Saud University, stressed the role of schools in countering the drug problem. As there are no accurate statistics regarding drug usage in the Kingdom, Al-Bakr described the size of the problem in other countries citing examples.
Al-Bakr urged social workers to survey schoolchildren to identify activities that may lead to drug addiction. She said this is important, as children and adolescents are vulnerable to picking up bad habits that would open the doorway to addiction.
