By: Fauzi Suhaimi

LENGGONG, July 16, 2023 – The Efforts to combat issue of drug and substance addiction at this time do not only lie with law enforcement agencies such as the National Anti-Drugs Agency (NADA), but instead need to be mobilized together, especially local communities and family institutions.

The Honorable Datuk Seri Dr. Shamsul Anuar Nasarah (Center), Sutekno Ahmad Belon (Second from left) and Mrs. Chan Hong Jin (Far left) during the NADA Community Day Program. Picture by NADA / UMKK

Deputy Home Minister, the honorable Datuk Seri Dr. Shamsul Anuar Nasarah said that the comprehensive measure is to ensure that the issue of drug addiction can be controlled in a comprehensive and targeted manner.

He said, the action was made taking into account the findings of the National University of Malaysia (UKM) study in 2020 which found that 60 percent of the total number of drug addicts still live with their families.

“From the findings of the study, it shows that for every 100 youths in this country, 6 people admitted to having taken drugs, while 4 people admitted to still actively taking drugs during the period of the study.

“This is a matter of great concern to all parties and requires collaborative action by the government, other authorities, community leaders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and families,” he said while inaugurating the NADA Community Day Program with The Honorable Datuk Seri Dr. Shamsul Anuar Nasarah (TMDN) here, on Sunday.

Also present were the Director General of NADA, Mr. Sutekno Ahmad Belon; NADA Deputy Director General (Management), Mrs. Chan Hong Jin and Perak State NADA Director, Mohd Azizi Salleh.

Furthermore, Datuk Seri Shamsul Anuar said, the implementation of appropriate activities needs to be mobilized to ensure that actions such as early prevention can be carried out to prevent drug abuse activities as a whole from occuring.

In addition, “targeted activities such as the Ride Against Drugs 3.0 Program @ Lenggong, futsal and netball competitions are among the efforts that can be continued to attract youth’s interest in healthy and competitive activities.’ he said.

“NADA estimates that 1.09 Malaysians are involved in drug addiction activities and of that number, 1,051,712 are men while 45,696 are women in general statistic.

“Event worst dilemma, most of the groups involved in these useless and dangerous activities are the youth aged 15 to 29,” he explained.