KUCHING: Sarawak is facing a catastrophe of an influx of drugs moving into the jungles.
Today, in most rural areas from south to north, many districts are hit with drug abusers among the young.
The situation demands an urgent remedy and if the authorities do not address the problem immediately, Sarawak will lose a generation of youths to drugs.
From Bau to Serian to Kapit, Bintulu and Lawas, youths from all races have been arrested for drug abuse with many peddling drugs to satisfy their expensive addiction.
Today, drugs like syabu are packed in such a way that it is so cheap and easily available.
There are packages as cheap as RM5 to RM10 for the youngest addicts, as young as 13 years old. The highest age to get addicted is between 16 and 18.
Peddlers who are found with a certain amount of drugs can face the mandatory death sentence under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952.
But the death sentence is not ingrained in the minds of the young addicts who want only to get high for as low as RM5.
Authorities should realise that it was announced by National Anti-Drugs Agency (AADK) director-general Datuk Seri Zulkifli Abdullah that Sarawak recorded the highest number of secondary school students found positive for drugs in the country since end of last year.
A decade ago, Sarawak was the only ‘white’ state in Malaysia where the number of drug addicts is the lowest.
There is a myth that Malays are normally involved in drugs but for Dayak youths, it is a new trend to take drugs. According to statistics from the Narcotics Addiction Rehabilitation Centre (Puspen) intake, 35 per cent of Dayaks are involved in drugs.
Most Chinese are involved in designer drugs or club drugs like ecstasy, marijuana or cocaine.
It is time to take note of the dangers in our midst before Sarawak lose more of its young to drugs which will have a domino effect across society.
New Sarawak Tribune spoke to the director of Puspen, a parent, a volunteer, a politician and a drug addict in search of a solution to tackle the menace.
Here we feature a former drug addict in a first of a four-part special series on the drug scourge.
The drug addict
Nervously adjusting his ‘kopiah’, Ali (not his real name) sat awkwardly waiting to be interviewed.
Only 28, Ali from Samarahan has seen and experienced the worst that life has to offer.
Being the eldest in a family of six, Ali had been in jail for a year for stealing a motorcycle, faced numerous arrests for petty crimes and once for running amok threatening to harm his parents who tried desperately to get him off drugs.
Failing to set a good example to his five younger brothers, the worst of his failure, according to him, was to see two of his younger brothers following his footsteps.
The easiest part was to blame his friends for his involvement in drugs. After finishing his Form Five education in a government school, Ali could not wait to get off the rail.
He said with his friends, he stole a motorcycle for a joy ride. The joy ride ended up with him staring at the four grey walls for a year behind bars.
Coming out of jail, Ali tried to do better for the sake of his parents – his mother, a housewife and his father, a construction worker.
He decided to get a job as a mechanic to be more independent. Although he was into alcoholic drinks and cigarettes, one bored night as he hung out with a friend, the so-called friend told him to take a ‘drag’ of a special kind. It was ganja.
From there he was hooked. He then graduated to something bigger and more sinister – he was soon into meth also known as syabu, speed, ice or methamphetamine.
He remembered sleeping two hours a day. As he worked, the money was all used to feed his drug habit. Soon he was smoking RM50 per day and RM100 per night.
The biggest amount he ever injected into himself was 20cc.
He remembered getting so high that he could reach the sky and when the low came, life was just not worth living unless he started another round of ‘chasing the dragon’ (inhaling the vapour from a heated solution of drugs).
Drugs, he said, were so easily available in villages that it was like buying candy.
He banked in money to his pushers and they set a venue to get his drugs. Mostly, the small plastic bags containing the drugs were thrown onto the grass outside different housing estates, in car parks or behind shop houses.
The most common place he picked up drugs was under the big trees near the flyover at Mile 3.
As he was young, his body was able to take in the abuse. But his mental state was another issue altogether.
Ali said he could not differentiate right from wrong. He was more daring after the drugs. He was ready to take on the world. He was so high that once he rode his motorcycle at full speed, spun out of control and ended up with a broken leg.
As he hit rock bottom when the drugs wore off, he felt helpless, angry and lonely.
When his salary failed to feed his habits, Ali resorted to crime. His only saving grace was that, he did not have the heart to ask his parents for money to take drugs.
“That was maybe, the most honourable thing I have done to them,” he said.
In March 2018, Ali was hauled into the centre for ‘cure and care’, a short stint of rehabilitation at Puspen, formerly known as Pusat Serenti for drug addicts.
A few months later, he was back, this time for a year to kick his habit and to give him a breather from his past.
Ali had run amok at home after a quarrel with his parents.
He said he relapsed and had gone back to his old ways after the ‘cure and cure’ rehabilitation.
His parents had no choice but to report to the police and he was arrested. A court order was issued to put him in the centre.
Ali had lots of time to reflect on his past. “I could not believe that I had done all those things. I remembered my mother constantly crying, begging me to stop taking drugs. It was so irritating. Now, I feel so sorry to put her through all this.
“The worst was when two of my brothers took drugs. I failed them. I feel so ashamed now,” he said.
At the centre, a drug addict undergoes a two-week detoxification process before they can join the other inmates.
Ali tried to make the best of his time there. He attended a three-month air-conditioner repair course organised by the CIDB and learned as much as he could.
He planned to go for vocational studies once he is out or he will go to another place to get a job to start afresh.
“I don’t want to go back home. I don’t want my old batch of friends to look me up and it will be back to where I started. I want to do something so that my brothers and parents can look up to me,” he said.
Although he told his two brothers not to take drugs, Ali is unsure if they are still taking it. They assured him that they had given it up. “But if I know they are still doing it, I will have to report them.”
Advising youngsters not to take drugs, Ali said there was nothing glamorous chasing that fake high. “It only spirals your world upside down, hurting your family in the process.”
How he fares in the future is anyone’s guess. Ali has relapsed before. This time, it is all in his hands once he gets out or he will be facing a long jail term if he goes back to his old ways and gets caught.
TOMORROW: The role of the Narcotic Addition Rehabilitation Centre (Puspen) in helping to get addicts to kick the habit
