Dispatches International
tionally dependent on each other. Sometimes their friendships or ro- mantic relationships fail; deficits in terms of their relationships with other people are therefore supple- mented with drugs. Mahbub Ullaah, Chairman of
Department of Development Stud- ies at the University of Dhaka, ex- plains the reasons behind the prev- alence of drug addiction among students. “All study and no play makes a very dull boy.” Ullaah blames the Bangla-
deshi educational system for the drug abuse among students. He articulates that the approach to educating youth compels students to study extensively, and perhaps excessively. As a result, students are not acquainted with the word “recreation.” Because of pressure applied by teachers and parents to excel academically, students often seek a release. The release, need- less to say, evolves over time into a drug addiction. Mohammad Oliuddin Tuhin,
a student at the Chemical Engineer- ing Department of Dhaka Universi- ty, corroborates Ullaah’s analysis. “I think, in our university, there are some subjects in which students get very stressed. They have to study a lot. Especially Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) stu- dents, when they do not get their expected results, they become frus- trated.” Tuhin affirms that in order to get rid of this frustration, the BBA students start taking drugs. Every year, the BBA Depart-
ment of the university admits only 10
a few “super-brilliant” students, ac- cording to Tuhin. The students are selected after a tough competition involving more than one million candidates. But because of drug addictions, many of those “super- brilliant” students have to leave their dream campus without a di- ploma in hand. Ullaah also emphasizes the
lack of extracurricular activities as a factor leading to drug addic- tions. “In our education institutes, especially schools and colleges, we do not have sports – good healthy extracurricular activities,” he says. “Most of the schools even do not have playgrounds. But children need some kind of extracurricular activities. If they had them, then there would not be problems like drug addiction.” The socio-cultural situation
of Bangladesh is also to blame for the increasing drug addic- tion among students, says Ullaah. “There are many broken homes in this country, husband and wife, fa- ther and the mother, they are not happy,” he says, explaining that the alienation of children in the home can make them vulnerable to sub- stance abuse. “Usually in such families,
children are not cared for enough. Their bonds with the family get loose and under such circumstanc- es it is very easy for these children to become acquainted with other boys or with others in the society with ill motives,” Ullaah says. “You need to be influenced to get addict- ed to drugs.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104