A Corporate Area high school principal is calling for parents and individuals who vend illicit substances to children to be held accountable as substance abuse is contributing to the violent behaviour being exhibited by some students.

“We need to get back to our parents being held accountable… I know about the child diversion policy and so on, but our parents are not being held accountable enough because a lot of our parents are allowing social media to raise their children. From they are very young we give them a phone or a tablet to keep them quiet, and we don’t understand [the consequences],” principal of Pembroke Hall High School in St Andrew Reverend Claude Ellis stated during last Thursday’s education meeting organised by the Kiwanis Club of North St Andrew, themed ‘Safer Schools Now: Strategies to Combat Violence in Schools’.

“I want us to also recognise that the people who sell around the school, in front of the school and so on, they also must be held accountable, because they are selling the vape, and the alcohol, and the cigarettes, and all these things to our children and they are not being held accountable,” the principal said.

“Can you imagine when a child comes to school and at 8 o’clock in the morning they are already intoxicated? Recently I was walking along my compound, going towards the gate, and I saw a beer bottle, and I said to myself, ‘The guys who came the night and trained for the football club drank the beer and just left the bottle.’ So I went over to pick up the bottle. But when I picked up the bottle it was cold, so some little girls, grade seven, were sitting at the table and I said, ‘Do you know where this bottle came from?’ And one of the little girls said, ‘A mine, Sir.’ I said ‘What you mean is yours?’ and she said, ‘I drink it’,” Ellis told the meeting.

He said the child eventually revealed that it “was a regular thing” and that she got the beer from home and took it to school.

“So we have to get to a place where our parents and those adults who sell these things to these children are held accountable, because in her mind it’s alright because an adult gave her at that hour of the morning. Accountability cannot be left to the child while we support children’s rights,” Ellis reasoned.

Calling for “a dent to be put in this violence” being seen in clusters across the island, the principal, in declaring that there is under-reporting, said the decay of morals needs to be halted.

“Over the years we have abandoned the whole concept of just having good manners. It is not just now that indiscipline is posing a challenge in schools — schools have always had some level of indiscipline, [but] now we have media [exposure] and it is now something we are more aware of. But here is what the challenge is for me: Over the years we have abandoned the concept of just having good manners. There is a correlation between what we call deportment infractions to other forms of violence and maladaptive behaviour. But then there is this segment of society that says, ‘Hair nuh mek yuh learn and clothes nuh mek yuh learn, so give the children their individuality and let them come to school how they want to come to school,’ and the chickens are coming to roost now because the individualities are clashing,” Ellis told the meeting.

In 2022 the St Catherine South Police, in continuing their crackdown on drugs and contraband in schools in that area, complained that school vendors, many of them parents, have continued to engage law enforcers in a “cat and mouse” game as they peddle drug-infused treats to students, claiming it is for “survival”.

According to Sergeant Princess Bayliss Ranger of the constabulary’s St Catherine South Community Safety and Security Branch, despite several arrests, the vendors, once released, are back to serving ganja-infused cookies and alcohol-soaked gummies to the students.

The National Council on Drug Abuse, in a May 2022 rapid assessment study which involved focus groups with 160 students and interviews with 20 guidance counsellors in 13 parishes, sought to find out the issues facing young people and the drugs they thought were the most popular. Students said these were Molly, vaping, and edibles.