The high school and college students will receive a series of lectures and will take part in group activities aimed at getting them off drugs and then keeping them clean.
A wide range of official organisations have been involved in the campaign as part of the Thai government’s Sustainable Defeat of Narcotics Campaign for 2013.
Officers from the Phuket Internal Security Office (ISO), the Centre of the Forces for Defeating Narcotics and the Public Health Office, along with volunteers from all three districts, paid surprise visits to high schools and colleges around Phuket and drug-tested students at random over three days.
The testing took place at the Phuket Non-Formal Education Centre, Phuket Technical College, Phuket Technology School, Phuket Vocational College, Plookpanya School, Thalang Technical College and Kathu Witthaya School.
Suwat Bubphapho of the ISO told The Phuket News at the Phuket Technical College, “The college cooperated very well. Teachers brought their students here regardless of their grades; with some schools it seemed that the teachers only brought the best-behaved students to be tested.”
A project document said all of the 82 who were found to have drugs in their urine “willingly agreed to participate in the nine-day-eight-night drug addiction treatment camp from August 22 to 30 at Cherng Talay Temple”. Considering that inpatient centers provide the highest level of care, the said teenagers are expected to be rehabilitated by the end of the camp.
Next Friday (August 30) the Deputy Minister of Education, Sermsak Pongpanit, will arrive in Phuket to check on the campaign and to preside over the official closing ceremony for the camp.
He will also attend a mass rally at the Sanam Chai playing field in Phuket Town at 5pm, when at least 9,000 people including government officials, state enterprises and students will take part in anti-drugs activities in honour of HM Queen Sirikit.
The rally will end with a fireworks display.