Mental health experts have dispelled the notion that there is a class difference in the increasing trends of drug abuse among youths in Nigeria.
Speaking with our correspondent, the experts, Consultant Psychiatrist and the Medical Director and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, Dr. Olugbenga Owoeye, and a Nigerian-trained but American based Psychiatrist, Academic, and Addiction Expert, Dr. John Akinbote, said it has become necessary to address factors fuelling substance abuse by youths from wealthy homes as well those from a poor background., Dr.
“Now, the type of drugs that any of these adolescents or young adults abuse depends on the environment and the availability of such drugs in such environment. “There is what they call ice, so it also cut across various socio-economic strata but there are few ones that are peculiar to all these affluent societies and these can be easily affordable to all these rich people.When asked what wealthy parents are doing and not doing that could unwittingly be pushing their children to drug abuse, the mental health expert said their major undoing was not having enough time for parenting.“There are some things they do that are sort of fuelling this issue.
Dr. Owoeye also flayed the parents for not paying attention to the kinds of friends their children keep, stressing that they are often the ones luring the rich kids into drug abuse. “They need to burst all the syndicates involved in the importation and the distribution of these drugs. This would go a long way to help us as both the drug demand and the supply would be adequately tackled.
“They have ways of communicating effectively among themselves to get these drugs. They may be very expensive but they are in the market for those who can afford them”. “The rich kids have more funding to get the more expensive ones like cocaine, and heroin and they have privacy.
Na loud be that?