Teens lax on sex and drugs: Foundation

Teens lax on sex and drugs: Foundation

Damar Harsanto
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Young people in the capital have more permissive attitudes
towards pornography, homosexuality, drug abuse and violence than
their older siblings, according to one survey.

"We are witnessing a radical change in norms and values of our
young people in the community," chief executive officer of the
non-governmental organization Cinta Anak Bangsa Foundation (YCAB)
Veronica Colondam said during a media gathering on Thursday.

YCAB conducted a series of focus group discussions involving
754 students aged between 15 and 17 from 23 mostly private junior
and senior high schools, in the capital in 2004.

Quoting results of the discussions, Veronica said that one in
two students had a permissive attitude toward pornography.

"The result also shows that one in three has a positive
attitude toward homosexuality, while one in five has a positive
stance against illicit drugs or violence," Veronica added.

She attributed the situation to strong influences of peer
groups where the teens live, coupled with the failure of the
education system to build strong a personality in every
youngster. Those things, she added, would give them the ability
to make and defend her/his own decision, especially if it
differed from the rest of their group.

"Such a situation is quite alarming, especially when it comes
to drug abuse," she asserted.

"That's why we are focusing on efforts to empower the
teenagers through personality programs to allow them to have
stronger self-protection to fend off negative influences from
their peer groups and instead encourage other teenagers to create
their own positive activities in order to improve their
environment," she said.

Last year, the foundation, which focuses on preventive
measures to stave off drug abuse among students aged between 13
and 19, managed to include 57,618 students in its seven-hour
training, of whom 8,503 became volunteer to take part in the
battle against drug abuse and drug trafficking.

"I think all parties in the communities, including the
government, have to have an immediate response to the alarming
situation. Otherwise, at the end of the day, we will all feel
deep remorse for failing to take the necessary action to save our
children," she implored.

Dede Shinta Sudono, a national program officer on the
elimination of child labor with the International Labor
Organization (ILO) also emphasized that there was a strong link
to how and where young people live to drug abuse and drug
trafficking.

"Based on a research we did with a number of street youths in
East Jakarta, we discovered that they are at high risk of drug
abuse or drug trafficking, as they spend lots of their time on
the streets hanging out with older people," Dede said.

Dede said 90 of the 92 street youths aged between 14 and 19
acknowledged that they had started using drugs when they were 13
and 28 of them had become drug pushers to pay for their drug
habit.

Box:
Second child prone to drugs?

YCAB says that between 60 percent and 70 percent of teenagers
addicted to drugs that seek counseling from YCAB are second
children in their family.

"This trend has been consistent over the past three years. But
we have yet to carry out in-depth research on that," Veronica
said.

Preliminary analyses show that the second child, especially in
a family of three children, receives greater psychological
pressure than her/his siblings amid poor parenting skills of
their parents, forcing them to resort to drug abuse.

"Parents' bad attitudes of comparing one child to another
child often does more harm than good," YCAB's counseling manager
Elsar DA Hayer said.