Substance use prevalent among Tobago’s youths

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

More than one in three Form Four and Five stu­dents sur­veyed in To­ba­go re­port­ed hav­ing used al­co­hol in their life­time, ac­cord­ing to re­search which crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad says pro­vides an im­por­tant pic­ture of sub­stance use among young peo­ple as the Gov­ern­ment moves to raise the le­gal age for al­co­hol, cannabis and gam­bling.

Dr Seep­er­sad pro­vid­ed the 2024 re­search, con­duct­ed among Form Four and Five stu­dents in gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools in To­ba­go, which found that 34.6 per cent re­port­ed life­time al­co­hol use, com­pared with 11.7 per cent who re­port­ed mar­i­jua­na use and one per cent who re­port­ed co­caine use.

Dr Seep­er­sad said re­searchers reached about 80 per cent of all en­rolled Form Four and Five stu­dents in To­ba­go, mak­ing the find­ings a sig­nif­i­cant rep­re­sen­ta­tion of that stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.

“We didn't man­age all but we got about 80 per cent, so that's a very, very large pro­por­tion of all of the Form Four and Five stu­dents in gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools,” he said.

How­ev­er, Dr Seep­er­sad stressed that the find­ings should not be in­ter­pret­ed as rep­re­sent­ing stu­dents through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion did not grant re­searchers per­mis­sion to ac­cess schools in Trinidad, while the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly pro­vid­ed ac­cess to schools in To­ba­go.

The re­search comes as the Gov­ern­ment in­tro­duces the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, in Par­lia­ment to­day.

The Bill seeks to amend sev­en pieces of leg­is­la­tion and would in­crease the min­i­mum le­gal age for the sale, pur­chase, pos­ses­sion or con­sump­tion of al­co­hol and to­bac­co from 18 to 21.

The pro­posed age for cannabis would in­crease from 18 to 25, while the min­i­mum age for gam­bling would al­so rise to 25.

The Gov­ern­ment has said the mea­sures are in­tend­ed to pro­tect young peo­ple from sub­stance abuse, ad­dic­tion and the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with gam­bling.

But Dr Seep­er­sad said the sig­nif­i­cance of rais­ing the age lies in de­lay­ing young peo­ple's ex­po­sure to ac­tiv­i­ties which car­ry risks.

“It's a form of de­lay­ing ex­po­sure to ac­tiv­i­ties that will car­ry some kind of risk, risks of ad­dic­tion, im­paired judg­ment, fi­nan­cial harm, oth­er kinds of neg­a­tive con­se­quences,” he said.

He de­scribed the ap­proach as a form of pre­ven­tion, but cau­tioned that leg­is­la­tion alone would not nec­es­sar­i­ly change be­hav­iour.

“It has worked well in oth­er coun­tries, but re­al­ly de­pends on en­force­ment,” Dr Seep­er­sad said.

“If you are not able to en­force the re­stric­tions that are put in place by law, then it re­al­ly be­comes in­ef­fec­tive.”

Dr Seep­er­sad not­ed that en­force­ment could be par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause al­co­hol and cannabis are read­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble in homes and so­cial set­tings.

“In such a very per­mis­sive en­vi­ron­ment with wide ac­cess, you know, with­in the house­hold and so­cial set­tings, etc, where adults don't re­al­ly en­force these things, you would find that chang­ing the law may not ac­tu­al­ly change the be­hav­iour,” he said.

He said the chal­lenge is even greater be­cause much of the ac­tiv­i­ty takes place in pri­vate set­tings.

“More than like­ly, I can imag­ine that the po­lice may not have the re­sources to po­lice things like un­der­age drink­ing or mar­i­jua­na us­age and all these things,” he said.

Dr Seep­er­sad said par­ents there­fore have a ma­jor role in en­sur­ing that the pro­posed law trans­lates in­to be­hav­iour­al change.

“Par­ents too, they have to be the ones who are the po­lice be­cause they are the ones in the homes,” he said.

He said par­ents are al­so re­spon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the en­vi­ron­ment in which young peo­ple are ex­posed to al­co­hol and oth­er sub­stances.

“They are the ones who buy the al­co­hol and oth­er sub­stances, bring it in­to the homes, use it in front of the chil­dren, and cre­ate that per­mis­sive en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.

Dr Seep­er­sad not­ed that schools and Gov­ern­ment must al­so be part of the re­sponse through ed­u­ca­tion and ev­i­dence-based pre­ven­tion pro­grammes.

“The schools have to be the ed­u­ca­tors when it comes to help­ing chil­dren to un­der­stand the po­ten­tial harms,” he said.

“Re­al­ly, it's a whole-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach that is re­quired when it comes to help­ing young per­sons un­der­stand about the dan­gers of sub­stance use, when it comes to lim­it­ing ac­cess and mon­i­tor­ing them and so forth.”

The re­search al­so rais­es ques­tions about mar­i­jua­na use among young peo­ple fol­low­ing its de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion in 2019.

Seep­er­sad said he did not have sys­tem­at­ic da­ta to quan­ti­fy the harm caused by mar­i­jua­na among young peo­ple in To­ba­go, but said there were recog­nised con­cerns about de­vel­op­men­tal ef­fects as­so­ci­at­ed with sub­stance use.

“While we don't have sys­tem­at­ic da­ta on the harm that it has caused, know­ing that it could pos­si­bly cause harm and know­ing that it's be­ing used among young per­sons, when you add those two things to­geth­er, at least you could rea­son­ably say that it's go­ing to have some kind of neg­a­tive ef­fect on young per­sons,” he said.

He said those pos­si­ble ef­fects could in­clude cog­ni­tive and de­vel­op­men­tal con­se­quences, al­though he cau­tioned that fur­ther em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence would be need­ed to es­tab­lish the ex­tent of such ef­fects.

The Gov­ern­ment's pro­posed leg­is­la­tion goes be­yond sim­ply chang­ing the le­gal ages.

It al­so cre­ates new of­fences and in­creas­es penal­ties for breach­es in­volv­ing al­co­hol, cannabis, to­bac­co and gam­bling. Un­der the pro­posed gam­bling pro­vi­sions, for ex­am­ple, a per­son un­der 25 who gam­bles or en­ters cer­tain li­censed gam­bling premis­es could face a fine of up to $50,000, al­though the Bill pro­vides for fixed-penal­ty and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive op­tions for spec­i­fied of­fences.

Dr Seep­er­sad said the ul­ti­mate chal­lenge will be chang­ing so­cial at­ti­tudes to­wards al­co­hol, cannabis and gam­bling.

“You want to reach a point where it be­comes cul­tur­al­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate for per­sons of a cer­tain age to en­gage in these kinds of ac­tiv­i­ties,” he said.

He said that cul­tur­al shift could take a gen­er­a­tion, but would have a longer-term ef­fect be­cause young peo­ple would even­tu­al­ly be­come par­ents them­selves.

“If you could achieve it in one gen­er­a­tion, you could change things,” Seep­er­sad said.

“What it means is that cul­tur­al­ly, that new way of think­ing would per­pet­u­ate it­self be­cause the younger gen­er­a­tion, when they have their chil­dren, they will in­grain val­ues in their chil­dren that re­al­ly en­cour­age them to ab­stain from al­co­hol us­age, mar­i­jua­na us­age, etc, at least un­til they get quite a lot old­er.”