Provincial schools will be sporting a new look this week, after officials from the National Authority for Combating Drugs plaster glossy posters illustrating the horrors of drug use on academic walls across the country, drug officials said Sunday.
“We will go to distribute this educational poster to students in provinces in order to educate them about the different diseases caused by drugs,” NACD’s educational and prevention coordinator Neak Yuthea said.
Following last week’s poster dissemination to Phnom Penh garment workers and government civil servants, drug officials fanned out across the country Monday to tack up posters in provincial schools. Commune officials and monks also will receive the materials, partially funded by the World Health Organization, Neak Yuthea said.
Schools are considered an ideal venue for anti-drug education, since high school and university students comprised almost 70 percent of those arrested for illicit drug use in the first nine months of 2002, a government report stated in October.
And due to domestic violence, depression, or a stressful environment at home, school or work, about 75 percent of the nation’s youth are at risk of drug addiction, found an NACD survey of 300 Phnom Penh students last year.
“Both young and old will know clearly about the illnesses that will destroy them from abusing drugs,” Neak Yuthea said.
The posters report that the 1996 drug control law levels 10- to 20-year jail sentences or a fine between 10 million and 50 million riel ($2,500 to $12,500) for those convicted of drug-related crimes, Neak Yuthea said.
The law assigns a one- to five- year jail sentence to people who have slipped drugs into a friend’s drink. Offenders found guilty of possessing or buying drugs may sit behind bars for up to a month.
