Awareness
Awareness
How do you bring about awareness that question popped into our head when we read that the ministry of education and the Leo Club are going to tackle the always interesting issue of drugs and alcohol awareness. Obviously, the initiative is not meant to make youngsters aware that there are drugs and alcohol available in abundance on the island. The objective is to tell them to stay away from drugs and alcohol.
But how do you do that? It is easy to give cheap advice. Don’t do drugs. Don’t get drunk. Simple and straightforward.
But here is the thing with every young generation. Youngsters love to experiment. So if you tell ‘em that drugs are bad for you they want to know exactly how bad it really is. The only way to find this out is by using drugs.
Same is true for alcohol. According to the press release the ministry issued about the campaign, drugs and alcohol abuse has reached the level of primary schools.
We’re not surprised; we’ve heard (in court) about kids that started smoking joints at the age of seven.
In a community where abundance is the rule, like the Netherlands, people used to buy lots of magazines – be it for women specifically, targeting sports or gardening – they all had one function: escape.
The escape function is also what drives TV programs that are getting dumber by the day. People don’t care anymore whether something is true or not, or whether those silly participants in mindless TV-games have a brain, they just want to be entertained – to escape from their sad reality.
Too many children are these days brought up with a new pacifier: a tablet. Give a kid a tablet, and mommy can play with her smartphone (or with the neighbor if she feels like it) all day long. This way, kids learn about the escape function at a very young age.
And when such fancy toys are not available to them, well, then there is always drugs or alcohol. Anything to numb the mind; anything to get away from the day to day reality.
So how then will an awareness campaign about drugs and alcohol bring over-imbibing youngsters to their senses?
The first question that must be examined is if they want to be brought to their senses, because that means dealing with reality. Maybe kids only want to come to their senses in a world that offers them some perspective. Remember the American dream? And if you do, do you think that there is something similar on the horizon for youngsters in St. Maarten?
Related news: “Ministry and Leo Club address drugs and alcohol awareness“
