ABU DHABI // The National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) plans to bring drug education to schools for the first time in a bid to halt the rise of drug abuse by youth.
Anti-drug officials across the UAE say they have noticed the age at which young people using drugs has decreased from 17 or 18 to as young as 12.
One specialist at the NRC revealed that there are 10-year-old children who are using heroin.
The announcement was made on the sidelines of a regional conference on drug use organised by the NRC and the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC).
"As part of our prevention programme policy, we want to target high-risk age groups, so we will hold sessions for students aged 12 to 14," said Dr Hesham Elarabi, head of health, education research and studies at the NRC.
Dr Elarabi said the comprehensive, 12-week course would involve parents and teachers. The programme will explain causes and types of addiction, consequences, prevention methods, treatment and rehabilitation methods, he said.
But the NRC still faces the challenge of persuading education officials to co-operate. He said they had not reached an agreement with any school yet, because some officials did not want to bring up the issue in front of students.
Some parents, however, say such efforts are long overdue.
The Emirati mother Hind al Muhairi said little is being done in schools to address the issue of addiction.
"I do my bit at home to ensure they do not get swayed by what they watch on TV, but schools have to be responsible too," she said. "We live in a multicultural society ... what may not have been common among the locals once is now growing in popularity."
Teenagers often do not think about the consequences of their decisions, making it necessary to target that age group, said Wayne MacInnis, the principal of the Raha International School in Abu Dhabi. "With such programmes, you can equip them to make better choices," he added. "Otherwise they learn incorrect practices from their peers."
Experts say the low age at which children experiment with drugs is troubling.
"We are seeing addicts begin taking drugs at a very young age. There are children who start using heroin at 10 years old," said Dr Mansour Shawki, a specialist doctor at NRC.
He said many of the drugs taken are medical pills that are legally purchased but addictive such as Tramadol, Lyrica and Neurontin.
As far as "harder" drugs are concerned, "the common trend in the region is for people to get addicted to sedative drugs like hashish, rather than cocaine for instance", he said.
Delegates suggested methods of harm reduction as practised in Iran and the UK, such as needle-exchange programmes to avoid the spread of HIV through syringes.
During the 1980s and 1990s Iran did not offer treatment for those convicted of drug-related crimes, and because all the drug users were locked up in one place without any treatment, the majority had HIV, said Mike Trace, the chairman of the International Drug Policy Consortium, who was reading from a study on opioid substitution therapy in Iran by Dr Emran Razzaghi. Dr Razzaghi was unable to attend the conference.
The Iranian government has changed its policy, however. According to Dr Razzaghi, thanks to those changes, there were no new cases of HIV among users of injected drugs reported in 2010.
However, according to Dr Elarabi, syringe and condom exchange programmes are still not needed in the UAE. The centre has not treated a single HIV case, he said.
Dr Juma Khudonazapou, a global health representative, said more opium is being brought into the UAE with the increase of Afghani immigrants. Moreover, the Gulf region is a crossover from Afghanistan, which is the main global producer of opium, to Europe.
* The National, with additional reporting by Afshan Ahmed
