The Head of Demand Reduction at the Narcotics Control Board, Mr Daniel Amankwah,has advised students in the boarding house to be careful about eating other people's "shito" in school, since some lace it with marijuana.

He said because marijuana was less expensive and accessible, it was the most commonly abused drug by young people, with some brewing it for tea.

Mr Amankwah,who disclosed this in an interview, said because cocaine and heroin were expensive, young people normally pooled money to buy them and injected them into their bodies.

He said most often,young people who abused drugs put on long-sleeved shirts (especially those who inject heroin and cocaine into their body),wore dark glasses, even when it was dark, and didn?t care much about their appearance.

He advised young people not to copy friends blindly in order not to be misled."It is not good to experiment with everything. Some of the things you experiment with might cost you and you may not be able to recover to tell your story,"he advised.

Young people are said to constitute the majority of drug abusers,a situation he described as serious,especially when the youth are the future workforce of the country.

He,therefore, urged parents to monitor the activities of their children to prevent them from falling prey to those social vices.

In a related development,a 2004 rapid situation assessment of the drug abuse situation in Ghana has revealed that the age at which students start smoking marijuana is between 10-12 years.

The assessment,conducted by Dr J.B.Asare,the Chief Psychiatrist,Ghana Health Service,explained that it was the adolescence period when the youth began their struggle for independence and self-identity.

It said young people abused drugs because of their innate curiosity to experiment with things and also peer pressure.