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Tackling the drug scourge at its roots

The arrest, Monday, of a 16-year-old youth in the Katugastota area with 22 heroin packs in his possession and the gunning down of a suspected drug pusher in Maligawatte, in broad daylight, on Tuesday, by two mobile hitmen, point to the thriving nature of the local drug menace.

The Katugastota incident is particularly disturbing because the arrested youth is said to have been a regular seller of heroin to schoolchildren in the Kandy district. We have here evidence of how surreptitiously and stealthily the problem of hard drug abuse has spread even into schools - the nurseries of the future adult citizenry of Sri Lanka.

The deceased in the second incident is believed to have been a victim of gang warfare - another virulent cancer which has grown to disturbing proportions. In fact, here we have proof of the growing link between criminality in Sri Lanka and the hard drug trade.

Over the years, then, the hard drug cancer has not only grown in malignancy but taken on increasingly dangerous dimensions under our very noses. In this connection, we use the first person plural, 'we', to indicate the collective nature of any efforts aimed at curbing the drug menace.

True, eradicating this scourge is primarily a task for the State and its law enforcement agencies, such as the police. However, the fact that even primary schoolchildren are no longer safe from the tentacles of the malign drug monster, points to the need for a broad-based response to it, covering also civil society.

Parents and elders, apparently, can no longer be complacent and care-free about the upbringing and protection of their children and wards. Special protective measures need to be taken to ensure that their children come under only beneficial and edifying influences.

It could be stated as a general rule that a child who is cared for, protected and loved, would be safe from the ugly wiles of the drug pusher. Hopefully, then, parents and elders would hearken to the Katugastota incident and draw the necessary inferences in relation to the well-being of their families.

Obviously, the need for counter-measures doesn't end here. The law enforcers need to crackdown harder and more consistently on the hard drug trade. We know for a fact that it is mostly the "small fry" in hard drug trafficking who have been netted by law enforcement agencies so far.

These are lower-rung figures in the evil business, such as couriers and small-time retailers. The lynch pins in the trade are still at large. If the hard drug scourge is to be curbed, these kingpins need to be collared and prosecuted.

It, then, boils down to a question of how effective the law and order machinery would prove to be against these powerful elements.

There is no escaping the need to smash the nerve centres of the hard drug problem. Obstacles getting in the way of this exercise need to be eliminated.

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