Browsing by Author "Darshana, A.T."

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Effectiveness of the Drug Abuse Monitoring System (Dams) as Information Sharing System: Situational Analysis
(4th International Conference on Social Sciences 2018, Research Centre for Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Senanayake, B.; Darshana, A.T.; Nawarathna, T.; Wathsala, H.
The Drug Abuse Monitoring System (DAMS) is a computerized information system, which collects information on persons arrested for drug offences and persons seeking treatment for drug abuse. Purposes of the DAMS are to determine the incidence, prevalence and characteristics of drug users, monitor the trends and patterns in drug use, determine and describe the at risk groups in the population and evaluate the existing treatment and rehabilitation programmes. Information is collected from drug law enforcement agencies and drug treatment agencies on a monthly basis and produce report quarterly and by annually for policy making. The National Dangerous Drugs Control Board (NDDCB) was designated the principal national institution charged with the formulation and review of a national policy relating to prevention and control of the abuse of dangerous drugs and the treatment and rehabilitation of drug abusers and was given power to make evidence based recommendations to eradicate drug menace using this database. The main objective of this paper was to analyze improvement and effectiveness of the DAMS after moving from manual data entering phase to web application phase. The DAMS was established in 1989 and it was updated as web application in 2015. This situation analysis has done considering the time period of 2012-2015 as manual data entering system and 2015 – June, 2018 as web application. According to the DAMS system data during the period of 2005- 2015 NDDCB has identified the issues which are data repeating, data entering delays, system crash/failures. The data reporting percentages in 2012 and 2015 were 14% and 35% respectively. Data reporting percentages in 2016 and 2017 were 38% and 44% respectively. During the period of January to June 2018, 37% of drug related arrest records have been reported to the system. This analysis illustrated that common advantage of implementing web application for users and administrator which are user friendly appearance; reduce the paper cost, timely reporting data and minimizing data repeating errors.
Recreational Drug Use & Night Life: Special Reference to Night Club Events in Colombo
(International Postgraduate Research Conference 2019, Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Senanayake, B.; Darshana, A.T.
Substance abuse as a social phenomenon, is varies from different settings and sub groups. Nigh club culture is being emerging in urban and coastal area in the country and recreational drug use is also being emerging associating with night club events. Many youths tend to be use substances in their teen age and societal and environmental factors have been influenced for the initiation of drug use. Research problem of this study was what is the combination between substance abuse and night life and the main objective of this research is to identify the nature and current trends of recreational drug use in night clubs in Colombo district. Survey method and case study method was used as research methods and Colombo district selected as study area. Snowball sampling technique was used to select the sample of 50 club drug users. Major findings of this research are as follows, 54% of the sample have initiated drug use at the age range of 15-17 and their curiosity have led them to use. The people, who attend to the party events, were desired to different music types and lighting patterns which feel with effects of drugs. Out of the total sample 90% were used LSD and they may face two kind of experiences which are “good trip” and “bad trip”, further LSD users are using different images which can enhance drug effects. Ecstasy users (49 persons) are using ecstasy party events for feeling euphoria, increase energy, empathy and mild hallucinations. There were two types of party events which are “night party” and “after party” that includes different characteristics and drug use appear as common in both events. Both legal and illegal drugs peddlers were present within the club and 62% (31) of the sample used to buy drugs from them. Further identified that majority of them were not daily clubbing and 32 (64%) of them used to go only in weekends. These people believe drug use in a night club is not a problematic as they used to go once in a week. However, because of the drug use 62% of them have ever been experienced to problematic situations in their life. Social media like Facebook was used to promote the party events Majority, 98%, of the sample have started clubbing when they were less than 30 years. People who attend to party events were multiple drug users. Cannabis (84%), heroin (42%), hashish (44%), pharmaceutical drugs (52%), cocaine (56%) and methamphetamine (56%) are the other popular drugs among them. Subcultural terms were used to communicate within the club such as, the term “phill” used for ecstasy, “acid”, ”stamp” for LSD, “white bair” for cocaine and “ice”, “mendi” for methamphetamine. Persons who attend to night club events consider drug use is a highly socially oriented action. Recreational drug use and the night life are the combined factors in night club settings