Female drug addicts in educational institutes

Pakistan, being a developing country, is passing through a phase where there are many social problems in the society that are overlooked. The new generation is specially inclined towards narcotics due to reasons like peer pressure and stress. We have been struggling to get rid of this problem and although we have been able to raise awareness to some extent but we still have not been able to eliminate the problem entirely.

Along with male drug addicts, there are a huge number of female drug addicts as well. Strangely, it is prevalent in educational institutes as well. What are the factors influencing drug addiction, how do these students manage to get drugs, the introductory source that leads them to taking drugs, from which sources do they get these drugs, how do they manage expenditures of drugs, how much do they spend on taking drugs in a month, what is the total monthly income of their family and questions like these have to be thoroughly researched and answered to reach some solid conclusion.

As a matter of fact, I conducted a survey on this very topic and found interesting result. Majority of the students I questioned belonged to the religion Islam, other than few students, who belonged to Christianity or Hinduism.

The religion of the students was questioned because I wanted to analyse if the socio-cultural factors have any implication on the usage of drugs among people. Female drug users are rejected by our society, so they prefer to keep their drug usage quiet in order to be socially acceptable. I also took into account different socio-economic factors, such as education, income and demographic factors.

Majority of the female drug users belonged to upper class of the society with a monthly income of Rs 10,001-200,000. The interaction among family was low, and resultantly, the parents were unaware of the activities of their children. The negligence of the parents towards their children can also be added as a factor. The most popular type of drug used among females was found to be tobacco and heroin.

Female students were more lenient about smoking as compared to other forms of drugs. There were few who mentioned using drugs like Ecstasy.

Smoking is a comparatively harmless form and it doesn’t alter their conscious state of mind the way other stronger forms of drugs do, so they can move easily among people and interact. Moreover, it is also less easily detectable. The main source which leads females to drug addiction was found out to be friends. Females were influenced when they saw their friends taking drugs. When I asked the respondents that how do they manage their expenditure on drugs, they told that they either spend their pocket money on them or if they run out of pocket money, then they tend to borrow from their friends to buy drugs because they don’t want to be detected by their parents.

Moreover, these people spend almost Rs 2000 every month on drugs and a great majority also goes as far as spending Rs 4000-6000 every month. These are those female students who take strong drugs like Ecstasy, because it is more expensive as compared to other forms of drugs.

Drug addiction can be reduced by launching informative websites to educate the public on how to get rid of addiction. Drug addiction is one of the major social problems in our society that does not discriminate its victims in terms of gender, class levels, age but it lies as a curse upon everyone in the society and has a tendency to ruin them. If we don’t put a stop to this problem soon, our society will be infected by this disease so badly that the cure will become impossible.

Since, females make up the most crucial part of a family, they have a major influence over children; so the drug usage of females is even more dangerous than that of males.

NOOR-UL-AIN

Kinnaird College, Lahore