It is my privilege to bring you greetings and deliver brief remarks on behalf of the CARICOM Secretariat, on the occasion of this CICAD-CARICOM Regional Meeting with Caribbean Universities on the Drug Phenomenon. The Secretariat welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with the Organization of American States (OAS), through the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), the University of the West Indies and the National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA), Jamaica in the hosting of this Workshop, and expresses its sincere appreciation to the governments of the United States and Canada, and to the European Community for making resources available for this important exercise.
All member states of CARICOM, have witnessed at first hand, the devastating effects which drug abuse and addiction have had on all aspects of our development both nationally and regionally. The negative social and health impact of drug use and addiction have been felt on the individual, family and community levels, most obvious in the loss of human capital due to death, disability or incarceration. In the economic sphere, the additional strain on health and security budgets and institutions and loss of revenue due to decrease in tourism receipts, all have serious implications for sustaining developmental gains achieved over the past two to three decades in our region.
We have long realized the important role which education plays in combating drug use. Our meeting here today provides an opportunity for some of the major actors in our tertiary education system to examine and clarify roles of the sector and plan concrete initiatives to address the execution of that role. In our regional context where health and social-care services might not adequately geared or oriented toward provision of appropriate demand reduction activities, education programmes within schools and institutions are the mainstay of drug demand reduction. This meeting focuses on Universities in the region, but we need also to recognize that other tertiary institutions in the region, in particular our Community Colleges influence a large number of students in our region.
The principal target for drug demand reduction programmes is the cadre of young people both in and out of school. At the regional level, drug prevention education has been incorporated into programmes for the promotion of healthy lifestyles, and in particular, the regional Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) programme. Within the past year, this programme has been revisited in order to strengthen the mainstreaming of drug demand issues. This was supported under the European Union 9th EDF programme. Specific challenges relate to both the technical competence and the willingness of teachers to address some of the sensitive issues within these programmes.
The shortage of human resources in the specific area of drug demand reduction within the region was identified as far back as 2000 when the Regional Drug Demand Reduction Strategy was developed. Much effort has been made over the ensuing years to address this challenge through discrete training programmes and workshops addressing specific elements related to reducing the demand for drugs or drug addiction, including capacity building for national drug councils facilitated recently within the 9th EDF programme.
One of the hallmarks of our regional integration process has been the addressing of issues through functional cooperation among our Member States and institutions. The meeting seeks to further this functional cooperation as proposals are elaborated for collaboration among universities in the Caribbean in preparation of professionals to deal with the complexities of drug issues in their fields, as well as explore the best modalities for coordination across the region through a collaborative arrangement with the OAS/CICAD and CARICOM.
We are only too aware that addressing the drug phenomenon requires planning and action within the logic of an inter-sectoral approach to the issues. This meeting brings together leaders from eight Caribbean universities, and representatives from governments and international organizations, and will focus on the preparation of students to tackle the social, economic and criminal consequences of the drug problem in the Caribbean, especially in the demand reduction field. It will also benefit from the knowledge, experiences and perspectives of experts from Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru, and others. This Meeting can provide an excellent opportunity for Universities to examine current practice and to move out of silos, sometimes so typical of arrangements in institutions in order to plan cross faculty, culturally relevant interventions in teaching and research that could redound to the benefit, not only of the principal beneficiaries, the students and graduates, but also to the entire regional endeavour as we seek to address this scourge which has cost us so much, socially and economically.
The CARICOM Secretariat remains committed to working with the tertiary education and other sectors to ensure coordination and coherence among the various regional initiatives aimed at addressing the Drug phenomenon. It was only one month ago right here in Jamaica that we engaged, in collaboration with CICAD, members of the legal profession and other stakeholders to address alternatives to incarceration for drug abusers in the context of establishment of Drug Treatment Courts. Hopefully, we will also take care to explore ways in which the linkages with other programmes, especially those under the purview of PANCAP, for example can complement and supplement the initiatives decided on at this meeting.
I take this opportunity to wish for all participants and resource persons, a very successful Meeting. It is clear, from the Agenda outlined for the next three days, that there is great probability that this will be so. I thank you.
