Dimapur: Nagaland director-general (prisons, home guards and civil defence) Rupin Sharma on Monday said 30% of the populace in Nagaland, as per his estimate, consume drugs.
“The enormity of the problem is very high in the state,” Sharma said while addressing the annual inter-school sports meet of the Dimapur unit of the All Nagaland Private Schools Association (ANPSA) at Don Bosco Higher Secondary School sports complex in Dimapur.
Noting that a lot of children also take drugs, he asked the students to inform their teachers or police if any of their friends is into drugs.
“Help your friends who take drugs by informing your teachers or police or else you will be encouraging them to continue the addiction,” he urged the students.
“You are young and you do not the implications of bad things,” he told the students and asked them to stay away from drugs and alcohol.
Sharma suggested that the school management authorities and ANPSA together may formulate a standard procedure and put in place a support system to deal with the students who are into drugs.
He also said there is a need to devise some programmes to check the menace of drugs among students. “We should try to rectify them and not punish them,” he added.
The IPS officer asked the students to change track when they are on the wrong foot.
He said schools are not only about learning but are also meant for unlearning and relearning certain things.
Nagaland being a tribal state, he also asked the students to do away with tribalistic mindset and be better human beings.
Sharma, who has taken a number of steps to reform jails and the lives of inmates in the state, said he has distributed 4000-odd books to jail inmates in the state for reading and acquiring knowledge.
He sought books from students who pass out from schools to be given to jail inmates.
Dr Andrew Ahoto Sema, the president of the Dimapur unit of ANPSA, also spoke on the occasion.