Hoping to get a handle on the methamphetamine problem in Cambodia’s big towns, a Battambang aid group has completed an awareness campaign, pegged to boat races, that reportedly drew hundreds.
The campaign, now in its second year, comes as officials continue to be alarmed by the growing use of methamphetamines and the falling cost of the drug.
In Battambang on Sunday and Monday, the Cambodia Social Science Study Group and the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention workers handed out more than 30,000 fliers, hundreds of T-shirts and balloons, and ran six booths designed to increase public awareness of the dangers of methamphetamines.
“Most of the revelers, including the youngsters, have read the pamphlets. This is a good message to both methamphetamine users and those who don’t use to disassociate themselves from it,” study group director Sar Phea Rhim said.
Nearly 16,000 people in Battambang province have used methamphetamines, Sar Phea Rhim said.
Programs such as the boat races are a good way to help stem what could be a methamphetamine crisis, UNODCCP Officer Graham Shaw said.
“It’s difficult to get statistical information on the impact. But there have been studies in Battambang town…and if we find use is down, then we can see these things work,” Shaw said.
Police in the northwest, where methamphetamines are either produced or imported from Thailand, have vowed to crack down on dealers, Battambang province Judicial Police Deputy Chief Chea Thaun said.
Yet in spite of the government’s new awareness of the drug’s dangerous potential, national authorities arrested 127 drug users, 87 of whom were school-age children or young adults, in the first nine months of the year, the National Authority for Combating Drugs has reported.
