Drug, substance abuse poses security risk to Ghana – NPC

The National Peace Council (NPC) has observed with worry the increasing incidences of drug abuse among young people in Ghana, posing a threat to the nation’s security if not addressed.

It said drug and substance abuse affected the cognitive reasoning of the individual, making him or her susceptible to influence by violent extremist groups.

“For such people, any effort by any person to influence them becomes an easy thing to do, because they will not be stable in mind.

If there is any recruitment into a bad company, if there is any effort to indoctrinate them and get them into particularly violent extremism, they will easily give up and then give in to that”, Mr Frank Wilson Bodza, the Deputy Director of Conflict Management and Resolution at the NPC, said.

Mr Bodza, who said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa, added that drug addicts needed resources to acquire the drugs and would be committed to any person or group that offered those resources.

The interview was in relation to the national concern about the increasing rate of drug and substance abuse among young people in Ghana and the threat of violent extremism to the country.

Mr Bodza observed that the security concern of drug abuse among the youth was also about the future of the nation, as the country would lose the needed human resources due to drug and substance abuse.

“For young people to indulge in drug abuse is a critical concern to every parent, every leader of the state, including even the communities they are coming from,” he explained.

He also advised the youth against drug and substance abuse as that could jeopardise their personal security since they would be the first suspect in terms of a crime though they might be innocent of that crime.

Other issues Mr Bodza mentioned included mental health challenges, which would bring a burden on the state to cater for such people.

Talking about interventions to address drug abuse, the NPC Deputy Director stressed the need for psychological support by the state to restore drug addicts to normalcy.

He also advocated social support for drug addicts in the form of employment, education, and skills training, among others, to get them engaged and gradually dissuade them from those drugs and substances of abuse.

“As far as people are engaged meaningfully, they will move away from some of these negative tendencies (drug abuse),” Mr Bodza explained.

Source: GNA

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