Analysis: the drug consumes minors
Children and young people are starting more and more quickly in the consumption of psychoactive substances and have more facilities to buy them. This is the X-ray of consumption for this population.
Drugs, drug use in minors in Colombia 2017 Analysis: the drug consumes minors under age Photo: Pixabay
Education Week
All the studies on drug use agree on something: the population that most accesses psychotropic substances is young, very young. According to the latest global drug survey (The Global Drug Survey), conducted by media outlets such as The Guardian and The Huffington Post in partnership with international organizations such as Energy Control, Drug Reporter and Corporación ATS Acción Técnica Social in Colombia, 58% of the people who turn to them are under 24 years old and 77.8% still live with their parents. According to data from Unicef, 35% of young people between 13 and 15 years of age said they had taken alcohol in the last month and 17% smoked daily.
The figures are worrying, especially if the debate focuses on the consumption habits of children and young people of school age. And is that more and more young people dabble in the world of drugs, endangering their personal life project.
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In Colombia, 24.3% of students say they have smoked at some time in their lives and 10% keep the habit today. Of these, 17.4% are between 16 and 18 years old, concluded the last National Study on the Consumption of Psychoactive Substances in the School Population. Two out of every three children reported having consumed an alcoholic beverage in the last month. The age of 13% of them ranges between 13 and 15 years; that of 20%, between 11 and 12 and that of 58.16% between the ages of 16 and 18. And this only in relation to legal drugs.
As for the illegal, the research revealed that marijuana is the most consumed substance by this population group, with a figure of 7%, especially in children under eleventh grade, although the average age is set at 14 years. Behind it is cocaine with 2.8% and an average age of 15.7 years. 1.8% of school children tested glue and solvents, and 0.8% ecstasy (with an average age of 15.4 years).
Catalina Ramírez, Psychologist of the Subdirectorate for Restoration of Rights of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF), pointed out that there are recurrent behaviors in young people that lead them to make the decision to consume. For example, "that parents do not have a lot of time to monitor their children, or that they are single parents who must leave their children in the care of third parties and dysfunctional families where there are adult consumption behaviors that induce them to repeat this type of patterns ".
National drug consumption
- Source: National Planning Department. 2015 data.
According to data from the state agency of 2017, 6,735 children are admitted to the program of restitution of rights for consumption of psychoactive substances of the ICBF, 2,488 women, 4,246 men and a person with undetermined gender. Of these, 49 were between 0 and 5 years old; 118, between 6 and 11, and 5,041, between 12 and 17.
For Diana Vásquez de Alba, social worker and school counselor in official schools of Bogotá, the beginning in the use of drugs in children and young people is related to their degree of curiosity and the experiences acquired in their training and development stage. The link and the relationships they establish with the rest of the people around them are also a determining factor. In the particular case of adolescents, access to these substances responds to a question of rebellion "according to the pathologies or dysfunctions that exist in their family nucleus. Some are children apparently abandoned or with little communication with their parents, "he said.
However, for Martín René Siabato Lozano, rector of the Facatativá Industrial Technical Institute, in Cundinamarca, it is difficult to identify young people over 16 who use drugs. The main problem, he said, is that many times this responsibility falls only on schools that, in most cases, do not have enough professionals to accompany and monitor adolescents. "What we do is refer to a control or support entity such as the ICBF, the Ministry of Health or the Secretary of Social Development so that they provide the necessary accompaniment to the students and their families." Twenty-one students of this educational institution currently receive assistance under the modality described by the rector.
The cases of consumption in young people of school age do not occur only in public schools. Also the private drag this problem. According to Catalina Ramírez, young people from high strata who access psychoactive substances