STUDY SHOWS MORE PINOY KIDS ARE NOW DRUG ADDICTS

Many drug pushers have been using children to transport shabu or
marijuana to avoid suspicion from policemen, it was learned Tuesday.

Unfortunately many of the young drug couriers have also become drug
addicts.

Most youths start taking drugs at ages ranging from 15 to 17 years old
while some start as early as nine years old.

A study conducted by a professor of the Ateneo de Manila University
showed that in 90 percent of the cases, children learn to use and
trade drugs from family members.

In fact, parents have been known to ask their kids to run their drug
errands for them. If the family is clean, there are the so-called
friends and neighbors.

Even without a visible source of income, children have been known to
demonstrate purchasing clout.

Ateneo de Manila University's senior researcher Dr. Emma Poria, said
the creative and resourceful ways of children have been harnessed by
drug addiction.

Young girls who need shabu exchange sex for drugs which is commonly
known in the streets as bato't pekpek [Filipino slang for shabu and
vagina].

Poria said from 1994 to 2002, girls showed the highest growth
percentage called "risk-taking behavior," which include tobacco,
alcohol and drug consumption. In drug use alone, prevalence among
girls tripled, from one percent in 1994 to 3.2 percent in 2002.

"Drug use is often the stepping stone to children's greater
involvement in selling, distribution and production of drugs," said
Werner Konrad Blenk, director of the International Labor Organization
(ILO). "There is also a link between drug use and the other worse
forms of child labor."

Peddling drugs has become an even greater incentive for children to
pursue a career in drugs, knowing that there's a bigger profit from
the illegal operations.

"Children in prostitution, children in pornography, children working
in the streets, children in deep-sea fishing, and children in the
construction sector are examples of children known to be highly
vulnerable to drug use," Blenk added.

The ILO, through its International Program on the Elimination of Child
Labor (ILEC), has been working to have this career option neutralized
with effective countermeasures that will keep kids away from the drug
business.

In September 2002, the ilo-ILEC commissioned rapid assessment studies
in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines to find out the best way to
do this. It would be the organization's first project following the
adoption in June 1999 of Convention 182, which prohibits and seeks to
eliminate the worst forms of child labor.

The action-oriented nature of the research project entitled "Working
Children in Drugs in the Philippines" meant that the Philippine team,
led by the Urban and Community Studies Program of the Department of
Sociology and Anthropology of the Ateneo, had to collaborate with
actual community-based NGOs in three urban-poor communities.

The study took preventive rather than punitive approaches, and
concentrated on demand rather than supply reduction.

The Childhope-Asia/Families and Communities for Empowerment and
Development (FCED) focused in Tatalon, Quezon City.
Addictus-Philippines worked in barangays 91 and 92 in Pasay. And
Kapatiran-Komunidad People's Coalition (KKPC) concentrated their
activities in the poor communities of Paco-Pandacan in Manila.

The results of the study were presented during the National Conference on
Children in Drugs: Effective Community-Based Strategies for Prevention and
Demand Reduction on August 11 and 12 in Pasig City. Which was attended by
members of people's organizations, Dr. Poria, ILO's Werner Konrad Blenk,
Sen. Jamby Madrigal, and officials of the Department of Labor and
Employment, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

The study shows what many already know: that children who do drugs are
mostly males who have dropped out of school and come from families
fraught with tension.

They are part of the estimated 3.4 million drug users in the
Philippines, and their drug of choice is shabu, which accounts for 94
percent of all drug addictions.

According to the children themselves, rehabilitation centers are for
crazy people, not to mention a place for higher drug learning.

The study points out that children that are thrown with adults in
standard rehabilitation facilities emerge with a newfound drug
expertise and firmer connections with drug networks. The answer,
according to the study, is in kid-friendly community-based centers and
specialized training among peers and community workers to build skills
in harms-reduction counseling and detoxification.

It takes very little for children to get into drugs. Adolescents are
especially vulnerable, according to Dr. Porio.

"Curiosity and experimentation, associated with teen years and
formation/search of identity seem to be strong factors in the
initiation to drugs," she said in the executive summary of her
research paper.

Moreover, drugs, like air, simply surrounds them. From 1990 to May of
2004, the value of seized drugs and related chemicals and equipment in
the Philippines was estimated to be more than P49 billion. But the
losses pale beside the P277 billion that drug traffickers make each
year.

The nongovernment organizations discovered that kids stay away from
drugs when their fundamentals are met: education, a support system of
elder siblings, alternative activities like sports, access to social
services including reproductive health, and above all, sober stable
parents.

In short, Dr. Porio said: "Children need love and attention."

Before the conference ended, children from the Tatalon and
Paco-Pandacan communities presented a wish list that they prepared:

1. I wish I had parents who would love me.

2. I wish the government would help us and I wish I could study for
free.

3. I wish we children could be understood and heard.

4. I wish there are less of us abused children and that we would be
given justice. And I wish I would be able to study.

5. I wish there are no more pimps to take advantage of our
weakness.

6. I wish the serious situation of street children could be avoided
and I wish there were less street children.

7. I wish that children like me could stop working in factories and
instead attend a clean proper school.

8. I wish the government would take action on laws that it passes so
that they do not affect children.

9. I wish parents would be given knowledge or education so children
and parents alike are not abused.

The next steps, said ILO Director Blenk, consists of three things:
action, action, action.