The regional secretary for Social Affairs announced, today, that the Government of the Azores enveloped, in the last four years, in prevention and training programs against the ill use and abuse of drugs, nearly 56.500 Azoreans, in their vast majority children and youngsters from all the islands.

He indicated that, on the other side, to the development of several projects connected with the addictions, 113 private institutions of social solidarity and non-governmental organizations joined.

Domingos Cunha, who was speaking in the opening session of the “International Symposium on Drug of Abuse” promoted, in Ponta Delgada, by the International Drug Abuse Research Society, pointed out that these data prove the objective of the Government of intensifying the promotion of health and the prevention of risk behaviours, which will imply, at medium and long term, the reduction of social-economical costs and the improvement of the quality of life of the citizens.

The regional secretary found advantageous for the scientific community and for the society in general the deepening of the knowledge on the dependences, indicating as equally important that the health professionals and the other interested and implicated people in this problematic to be updated, to better intervene in the prevention, in the treatment of patients, avoiding, also, the dissemination of infectious pathology, in the familiar and social exclusion and even in the eventual delinquent activity of the consumers.

It is for this reason that the Government of the Azores has been coming to provide training as part of the Regional Program of Prevention of the Ill Use and Abuse of Psychoactive Substances / Drugs, to many professionals of health, teaching, social service and safety forces, among others, he alleged.

Domingos Cunha used the opportunity to tell that, in the area of the combat to the use and abuse of drugs, the Government assumed a protocol of scientific cooperation with the European Institute for the Study of Risk Factors and Protection in Children and Adolescents, which will allow a better understanding of the phenomenon of the recreational places frequented by youngsters, in which there participate eight European countries and 12 Portuguese cities, among which Ponta Delgada and Angra do Heroísmo.