On the 29th of April, Cassandra Chew wrote an article titled "Something to sniff at" which was published in The Straits Times. She writes about the rising trend of glue-sniffing cases amongst young people in Singapore. In her article, she uses Liane Wong, a secondary 2 national fencer, as an example and a role-model that teenagers ought to follow. As a national fencer, Liane Wong does not abuse drugs or any other substances as this will greatly affect her goals in fencing. The writer then concludes that Liane Wong is an example that all of today's youths should follow, as she has shown courage and determination in pursuing in her dreams in fencing, rather than waste it on the delusional "hope" that glue sniffing supposedly brings.
However, this article has made it sound as if the only reason why glue-sniffing is becoming more and more emminent is because the teenagers are giving up and letting go of their hopes and dreams. To my believe, this is untrue.
The youths must have gotten the idea of "taking a break from life by glue sniffing" from somewhere. And since youths are easily influenced by the friends, what the article should be aiming for instead is the issue of too much influence and peer pressure from the youths friends towards the youth himself. The article should be targeting on making the teenagers feel that there is someone else they can relate to other than their peers.
Furthermore, I think that the case of the national fencer is not relevant to the prevention of glue-sniffing cases. If the newspaper wants to stop youths from glue-sniffing, providing them with the success story of a national fencer who does not glue sniff is not a good way. The only thing the youths can get from this is that, one can be a national fencer if he does not sniff glue. But the youth already is sniffs glue, so there is no use in telling him what a great fencer he could have been in his life. They should have put instead success stories of people who managed to overcome this addiction of glue-sniffing and make something meaningful out of their lives.
As a teenager, I think it it best for me to have the friends around me to not smoke, and then only will i stop smoking. These friends would serve as inspiration and motivation to carry on fighting the tobacco addiction. The same applies to glue-sniffing. If more people stop sniffing glue, then they would influence their friends, who would then influence other friends. In essence, the question to ask is what is needed for the "first batch" of this cycle to spark these entire process. A mass campaigning programme against glue sniffing could be carried out. And the way to get youths actually participating in these campaign is by holding concerts or exhibitions or show stunts at these mass gatherings.
We often think of the so called "perfect" and model solution for problems regarding teenagers. What we fail to realise is that it is not what we think of somethng that matters more, it is how the teenagers would accept it and think of it. Spare a thought for these people. They are the future of our country.
Article: http://newslink.asiaone.com/user/OrderArticleRequest.action?order=&_sourcePage=%2FWEB-INF%2Fjsp%2Fuser%2Fsearch_type_result.jsp&month=04&year=2008&date=29&docLanguage=en&documentId=nica_ST_2008_8673649
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
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