National Dangerous Drugs Control Board , Cooperate Plan of Preventive Education and Training Division

Preventive Education and Training Division

National Dangerous Drugs Control Board in Sri Lanka

Cooperate Plan

The Preventive Education and Training Division of the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board is one of the primary ones that is driven by the principles of drug demand and supply control in Sri Lanka and how its activities have spread over the past few years and how it will change over the next three years is analyzed in this brief. The PET's primary policy is to strengthen demand-reducing environmental preventive interventions by linking species-specific supply-control agencies and directly weakening demand through behavioral prevention activities. For this, evidence-based environmental prevention interventions are implemented and PET cooperates with all participating institutions for sustainable drug control through short-term, medium-term and long-term outcome generation.

The basic principle of prevention is to prevent children and young people from experimenting drugs before they start using drugs, to delay the first test as much as possible or to prevent someone who has already started using drugs from developing a drug use disorder. In the programs directed for this purpose, PET enrolls to work for evidence base prevention environmental interventions to prevent the use of alcohol and tobacco-related products and to stop illegal drug experimentation, and to further advocate for behavioral interventions in a micro level environment.

Here, state, provincial, cultural, political and policy-making issues are actively addressed for the environmental interventions of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs use, and the corresponding policy-making, updating and re-reviewing are generally contributed. Increasing and upgrading on tobacco and alcohol prices, taxation policies, restrictions on the sale of alcohol and tobacco products, the time limit for those outlets to be open, the number of outlets selling alcohol and cigarettes compared to the population density, institutions in specific micro-environments (schools, places of worship) and distance between the establishments selling tobacco and alcohol products, inclusion of pictorial warnings in the sale of tobacco related products, responsible alcohol sales, standardization of bar keepers in the provision of alcohol services, transfer of alcohol sales to public entrepreneurship, enforcement of legal age for sale of alcohol and tobacco products, and intervenes for the implementation and enforcement of environmental policies such as preventing the release of alcohol and tobacco products into the market in small quantities.

Behavioral intervention is mainly carried out for the development of skills and attitudes towards drug use by children and young people and related knowledge, abstinence from drug use. Here the family, school, peers and work places in the micro environment become prominent. These behaviorist approaches mainly occur in six dominant ways. They are school based, youth based, family based, media based, workplace based and environmental based.

These six major subjects are implemented under 35 sub-subjects and 35 operational plans. A key part of this strategy is addressing individual perceptions. Thereby the cognitive process of making the positive image that one builds about drug use into a realistic or negative one.

There, programs will be conducted for the development of these attitudes, knowledge and skills through prevention, education and training programs based on human development from early childhood development to adult stage. However, compared to the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, the PET Division has been able to make progress in the programs by overcoming the difficulties in the country. But further employee layoffs and financial shortages can also be cited as challenges faced by PET in the past chapter.

At the same time, PET has focused its attention on Sustainable Development Goals based on 2030. Accordingly, PET focuses strongly on three goals in particular. That is to target number 03, target number 05 and target number 10. However, PET highlights these emphases when reporting these final results in quarterly, semi-annual and annual progress reports. Furthermore, PET has been continuously demonstrating its contribution through international day celebrations, especially through expert committees, by connecting with various international organizations globally.

Finally, a summary of the programs carried out by PET in the past few years will be presented. In the year 2021, PET planned 2968 programs out of which 1694 programs were completed with a progress of 57.07%. This value creation was the same in a situation where the country was mostly closed during the global corona pandemic. Even though the year 2022 is the year of the end of the Corona pandemic, there is a big economic crisis in the country and there is clearly a dysfunctional state of schools and government machinery, but there is a big challenge to complete the programs. This year compared to the previous year, the number of programs was reduced to 2346, out of which 2147 programs were completed, achieving a progress of 91.52%. The year 2023 was a very good year and it was a year when the health and economic stability of the country was strong. Therefore, PET planned 2358 programs as last year and completed 2888 programs making a progress of 122.48%. The reason for this was that the demands received by PET were higher than the planned values. The work to be done for the next three years is clearly included in this corporate plan.