Campus drug deliveries

The rising trend of using delivery services to acquire drugs has led to Islamabad's top court intervening with a ban on direct deliveries to students in campus, meaning that any package or food deliveries must be checked by campus officials. However, who will check the deliveries, how they will do it, and how intensively they will check is still unclear.

Still, in most cases, checking is unlikely to be particularly complicated -—anecdotal evidence suggests the contraband is not particularly well-hidden or disguised, and in the vast majority of cases, the drugs are directly handed off by the courier. By simply adding a layer between couriers and students, educational institutes could significantly reduce the amount of contraband getting into students' hands.

Recently reported data shows that drug use among students has become so common that up to 53% of students in some elite institutes admitted to using drugs ranging from hashish to heroin and methamphetamine. While any use of drugs is bad, a more pragmatic view is that it will always occur at some level. The goal is to ensure that it never goes beyond nuisance level.

International research has shown that the only effective way to reduce consumption is to reduce demand. That, in turn, can only be done through awareness and attitude changes that encourage health habits and constructive recreational activities, both of which can be hard to access for young people on a budget.

It thus falls on the government and educational institutes to ensure that students have access to extracurricular activities that are healthy and educational, or at least fun and harmless. Unfortunately, both sides are failing — most schools and colleges, especially private schools, lack adequate sports facilities and extracurricular clubs, while the government has still not formalised a comprehensive policy in this regard.