Goa has discovered another number in its fight against drugs: 500 metres. A recent Education Department circular called for a 500-metre drug-free zone around educational institutions. Predictably, the directive raised questions: How exactly are schools expected to keep half a kilometre around their campuses drug-free? Do principals have the authority or manpower to police neighbourhoods? The government has since clarified that schools are not expected to become enforcement agencies. The intention is awareness, vigilance, warning displays, monitoring suspicious activity and reporting concerns, while enforcement remains with the police and anti-narcotics machinery. That clarification is welcome. But it does not change the larger question I have been raising for a long time: Are we getting our entire substance-use prevention strategy wrong?
Let me be clear. I support keeping drugs away from schools. I support stronger policing, intelligence gathering, action against peddlers and dismantling trafficking networks. Schools must also remain vigilant and report suspicious activity. But none of this, individually or collectively, should be mistaken for prevention. A drug-free perimeter is an environmental control measure. Awareness is an educational measure. Enforcement is a supply-reduction measure. Prevention is much bigger. And Goa appears repeatedly to mix these up.
Before celebrating 500 metres, we should revisit another number: 100 metres. For years, Goa has had restrictions concerning liquor outlets near educational institutions. Yet information placed before the Legislative Assembly reportedly showed dozens of wholesale liquor outlets operating within 100 metres of schools. Whatever the licensing histories, exemptions or legal technicalities involved, the public-health question remains uncomfortable. If we have struggled to create the environment we intended within 100 metres, why should declaring 500 metres suddenly reassure us?
This is not about comparing a licensed liquor outlet with an illegal drug peddler as though they are legally identical. They are not. It is about asking whether our idea of Nasha Mukt Goem is conceptually coherent. Which nasha are we actually talking about? Only narcotics? What about alcohol? Tobacco? Prescription-drug misuse? Synthetic substances? From an adolescent prevention perspective, we cannot divide substance use according to which government department regulates it. Government works in departments. Vulnerability does not.
The latest clarification also makes another distinction important. If the 500-metre initiative is primarily about awareness and vigilance, then let us call it that. But awareness cannot become our favourite substitute for prevention. Goa has been doing awareness for years. We have conducted rallies, marathons, pledge ceremonies, competitions, talks, poster campaigns and “Say No To Drugs” programmes. If awareness alone prevented substance use, Goa should have solved this problem years ago.
Yet we continue to speak about rising seizures, changing drug markets, synthetic substances, trafficking networks and the vulnerability of young people. That should tell us something.
I have been writing about this issue for a long time because our prevention conversation keeps returning to the same comfortable territory: Tell young people drugs are bad, ask them to say no, organise an awareness activity, strengthen enforcement and hope that vulnerability disappears. It does not. A young person may turn towards substances because of curiosity, peer influence, family conflict, trauma, academic pressure, loneliness, poor mental health, sensation-seeking or the desperate need to belong. Some young people are not necessarily looking for intoxication. They may be looking for escape, acceptance, relief or connection. A poster cannot provide those things.
This is where our strategy requires a fundamental shift. Instead of repeatedly asking, “How do we keep drugs away from young people?”, we must also ask, “How do we make young people less vulnerable when drugs eventually come near them?” That means building resilience, refusal and decision-making skills, emotional regulation, healthy relationships, critical thinking and help-seeking behaviour. It means accessible counselling and mental-health support. It means strengthening families and helping parents recognise early warning signs without turning the home into a police station. It means identifying vulnerable adolescents early and responding with support rather than stigma.
The 500-metre concept also encounters a very modern problem: The smartphone. The contemporary drug market does not necessarily require someone suspiciously standing outside a school gate. Connections can happen digitally. Social networks, messaging platforms and changing patterns of communication have transformed how young people interact and how risks reach them. The supplier could be kilometres away while the connection sits in a young person's hand. We can draw a 500-metre circle around a school. We cannot draw one around the internet.
This is why enforcement, awareness and prevention must be understood as different but complementary components. Police must target supply. Schools must educate and remain vigilant. Health systems must provide treatment and mental-health support. Families must become protective environments. Communities must identify vulnerabilities. Government must ensure coordination. And prevention professionals must develop sustained, age-appropriate and evidence-informed interventions beginning well before experimentation starts.
Goa Police's stronger enforcement measures and anti-drug roadmap are important. Large seizures and arrests demonstrate action against supply. But every major seizure should provoke another question beyond congratulations: Why is there a market large enough to keep attracting supply?
A serious Nasha Mukt Goem requires an integrated substance-use prevention policy encompassing alcohol, tobacco, prescription misuse and illicit drugs; measurable prevention outcomes; mental-health services; family interventions; school-based behavioural programmes; early identification; treatment and rehabilitation; youth engagement; digital-risk responses; and sustained investment in prevention alongside enforcement.
So yes, let us make those 500 metres safer. Let schools remain vigilant. Let communities report suspicious activities. Let police aggressively pursue those selling drugs around children.
But let us stop pretending that the circle itself is the solution.
Every afternoon the school bell rings, the gate opens and the child eventually crosses that line.
Our prevention strategy must be strong enough to cross it too. Because Nasha Mukt Goem will ultimately be decided not at 100 metres or 500 metres, but by what happens to our young people at 501.
