Malaysia has a serious drug problem. The 137,176 addicts registered with the National Anti-Drugs Agency (Nada) may not blink the danger we are in, but its estimate of one million who remain outside its rehabilitation system may. And here is how low substance abuse can get.
Yesterday, this newspaper reported the sad story of a 7-year-old, who just started school, being addicted to syabu and methamphetamine.
It turns out to be a case of like-mum-and-dad-like-son. Granted, drug addiction isn't congenital, but what the child sees, he copies.
There is an even more tragic story in the telling of Nada. Between 2019 and last year, infants — yes, babies — were found to be suffering from drug addiction, passed on by breastfeeding mothers hooked on drugs.
Yes, it is a bad, bad situation. Each year it gets worse. Studies by universities, health authorities and research institutions show that peer influence, parental behaviour and poverty being some of the contributory factors to drug abuse.
Policymakers must zoom in on these, especially the poverty bit. According to an article published on April 3 last year in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, the government spends over half a billion ringgit every year to rehabilitate addicts, including housing and treating them.
However, the country's focus is largely post-hoc. Without meaning to take away the good work by Nada and others, this, in our view, is already a late intervention.
The high rate of recidivism, too, doesn't help. Early intervention means shifting the focus to stopping drug addiction from starting. This is hard to do, but must be done.
Let's be blunt. It is a social disaster of a dangerous proportion waiting to happen. Lest we forget, some five per cent of our youths, who numbered some 11 million when we last counted, are down with the "disease".
They are the muscle of an ageing Malaysia. Such sinews must not be allowed to wither thus. Even Nada realises that the country's drug affliction requires a whole-of-society approach.
Parents, neighbours, village heads, community leaders, religious leaders, teachers and headmasters have an important role in stubbing out the problem.
We must become a caring society. There may be someone next door somewhere who is a burdened soul, a reason enough to turn to drugs for temporary relief.
But we, his neighbours, are too busy with our lives that we don't know he is so burdened. We don't even know when we last spoke to him.
Many such distanced souls, and even families, have gone unspoken to for years. We may not be able to solve our neighbours' problems, but we may know someone who can.
A good neighbour is one who makes sure that the one next door doesn't go to bed on an empty stomach.
True, compassion is hard to summon, but no community in the true sense of the word can exist without a generous dose of it. After all, community by definition is a sharing of some sort.
Home, too, is where the heart should be. Children will spend much of their time there if parents are able to create a conducive environment. It is when this is absent that they turn elsewhere to solace their isolated souls.