Broadly, there are two categories of substance abusers – the educated and wealthy who indulge as a lifestyle and become addicted, and the poor or uneducated who resort to substance abuse as an escape. Of course, there are many sub-classes, but this response is not about that. It’s about how we can help.

The rich and educated… who can help them? Unless a person is able to recognise that he has a problem, all the good intentions will be to no avail. But for what it is worth, counseling can be offered. Friendship even, if that is what they need.

But our focus should be those whose lifestyle is rooted in the drudgery of eking out an existence and numbing the mind in order to escape the cares of life. The first line of attack is education. It may be too late for many of the adults but the children can be saved, if they can understand the dangers of substance abuse. While the church and civil society can do much, their reach does not extend far enough. Our education system has to recognise that Moral Education is more about lifestyle education and less about passing exams.

However, no matter how good the education is, if there is no escape from the social environment, lifestyle habits will be hard to break. This is the real challenge. What can we do to help people pull themselves out of the quagmires their families are stuck in? I honestly have no answers.

I can only think one possible solution that can attack part of the problem – very low-cost supervised hostels for students so that they can live away from the constraints and bad influences of a poor home environment. These hostels need to be sponsored, staffed… deserving residents need to be selected and screened. A challenging task.

This can be followed through with low-cost accommodation for young working adults, again enabling them to escape the negative effects of home without burning a large hole in their pockets. The logistical challenges are similar.

My ideas may be totally unworkable. But hopefully they are a start, and better ideas will come in.

One can say that PR politicians should be doing better than the BN ones in this respect. But the entire question of properly serving the people is unfamiliar ground. For one thing, as the writer of this article rightly pointed out, the people have got into the habit of expecting help over some really ridiculous issues. For another, our political culture is one of posturing and fishing for votes.

For 50 years, a political culture has been cultivated where the elected representatives are only expected to look after trivial things like blocked drains and overgrown vacant lots. And to make this “looking after” business a media circus. Members of the press have also been trained to seek out and report such trivial matters and not critically examine the real issues.

Our elected BN representatives have no experience with participating intelligently in debates on legislative matters. They can only vote in agreement to whatever proposal is on the table. And the opposition reps have got into the habit of causing a ruckus because nothing else they do is effective.

9 Months is hardly enough to develop a corps of intelligent and articulate elected reps, whether in Parliament or in the State Assemblies. The baby is just learning to walk. Lim Guan Eng’s team in Penang has probably been the most successful, although he too was initially guilty of some serious faux pas.

PAS, on the other hand, is struggling with schizophrenia – the result of two competing philosophical heritages. And whenever there is internal dissension, politicians seem too want to outdo each other with foolish statements. Ditto for PKR, although many of the multiple personalities seem to have died out, leaving just a few, the three most prominent being Anwar worshipers, those ex-UMNO but still UMNO in the heart and those who really should be in PAS.

Those sensible leaders in PR have a huge task ahead of them. HRH the Sultan of Selangor has given some excellent advice about what our politicians should prioritise. Let us pray that we don’t have to wait for too long for a better breed of politicians to be cultivated.