Anti-drugs awareness event held

Islamabad:Joining the world community to commemorate International Day Against Drug Use and Illicit Trafficking, an interactive session on raising awareness, knowledge building activity focused on highlighting prevention education for young students from schools in Islamabad and Rawalpindi was held.

Despite the heat, over 150 students and teachers, along with community members and friends of the Karim Khan Afridi Welfare Foundation (KKAWF) engaged in art and sports activities to channel youth energies and build protective factors to learn the importance of saying ‘no’ to drugs. They painted colourful posters and enacted charades to express their feelings on the menace of drug use, says a press release.

Speaking at the event, KKAWF Chairperson Cristina von Sperling Afridi emphasised that concentrating on prevention awareness and knowledge is the only safeguard for the community and only alternative for the youth to build a system of self-defence which protects them from getting trapped in the world of drugs. The more aware the youth are of the wide range of issues surrounding drug use, the better.

Drug use is taking a heavy toll on youth especially students in Pakistan and fuelling a life of addiction and crime in the country. It is a bitter fact that a huge number of the younger generation use narcotics, in particular in educational institutions. With an estimated nine million drug users and four million addicts in Pakistan, according to projections by the Ministry of Narcotics Control, the bulging youth population of 130 million boys and girls under thirty years of age – 64 per cent of the population - will be hard hit by the rise in use of drugs.

KKAWF has successfully equipped young students with better knowledge and awareness, breaking taboos through prevention education using its five pillars of drug abuse, arts, sports, environment, civic sense to build protective factors for youth and engage with them to make healthy life choices and better identify, understand and manage emotions.