This Year, Student Drug Offenders Reach 255... Rapid Increase Rate

Last Year Reached 10,626 People
"Need to Establish a Strengthened Education System"

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Sehee] This year, the number of student drug offenders has exceeded 200 by a wide margin.

According to drug offender data submitted by the National Police Agency to Kang Deuk-gu, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, a total of 255 student drug offenders were arrested up to August this year.

The number of student drug offenders, including elementary, middle, high school students, university students, and graduate students, increased from 140 in 2018, 195 in 2019, 323 in 2020, to 346 last year.

While the total number of drug offenders increased about 1.3 times from 8,107 in 2018 to 10,626 last year, the number of student drug offenders surged by as much as 2.5 times.

A total of 55 government employee drug offenders were arrested from 2018 to August this year. The number of arrests by year was 14 in 2018, 10 in 2019, 14 in 2020, 6 in 2021, and 11 this year.

Among the 55 government employee drug offenders, 18 (32.7%) belonged to the Office of Education.

Assemblyman Kang pointed out that related education is not being conducted in schools.

According to the Ministry of Education guidelines, each school must provide drug-related education at least twice per semester (10 sessions) and at least once every three months (10 hours) in accordance with the School Safety Accident Prevention and Compensation Act (School Safety Act) and the Child Welfare Act. However, it has been found that most drug education in schools is integrated with education in other fields such as health or internet addiction.

Assemblyman Kang emphasized, "Since drug-related education is integrated with other topics, the actual education time is likely to fall short of the guidelines," and added, "Our society must painfully accept the current status of student and Office of Education government employee drug offenders and the Ministry of Education should establish a strengthened education system."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.