How Substance Abuse Is Silently Driving Children Out of Education

Published on: September 2, 2026

We have often seen policymakers gather together to debate why a child’s seat suddenly falls vacant; the script rarely strays. The common answers we get to these questions are mostly the crushing poverty that trades a child’s notebook for a day’s wages, the stolen futures of early marriage, or the quiet isolation of families adrift on shifting char lands. These truths are heavy, real, and sometimes undeniable. But beneath all the official statistics lies a quieter, more devastating heartbreak; one that almost never makes it into Ministry briefs or development frameworks. It is the story of children who slowly lose themselves to the curse of substance abuse, fading away long before they ever stop walking through school gates.

Almost on any bustling street in Dhaka, warning signs are right around us; children no older than ten or twelve are seen walking through traffic with small wooden trays slung over their necks, selling cigarettes, paan, and loose matchsticks. People often pass them by, buying a quick smoke without a second thought, rarely pausing to realize that the very items they sell might become their own tragic point of addiction.

For the most vulnerable, a much darker and deeper tragedy occurs. In the shadows of flyovers and railway platforms, young boys and girls are seen pressing plastic bags tightly over their mouths and noses; a deadly practice known as “bagging.” Others hold chemical-soaked rags over their faces, “huffing” concentrated toxic fumes from cheap synthetic glues and volatile solvents just to numb their bitter cold, relentless hunger, and psychological pain of living on the margins. What begins as a survival mechanism quickly turns into a chemical trap, severing their last remaining ties to formal education.

However, walk into the walled premises of prestigious private schools or urban universities, and this epidemic strikes brilliant young minds through another entry point. This is where wealthy students, who will become the country’s future academics, innovators, and leaders, find themselves in a situation where the consumption of prescription drugs, yaba, and other potent drugs is shockingly easy and common. With money to spare and peer pressure driving them, they resort to such drugs.

Even the fall from grace is just as destructive. Over semesters, the psychological damage silently piles up: disturbance of sleep patterns, extreme anxiety, abrupt isolation, and ultimately, the destruction of intellectual potential. These promising youths do not simply become dropouts in one night; rather, they slowly lose academic ground until it becomes clear that all hope is lost for their future.

No matter whether they are homeless children living on the streets of a Dhaka slum or privileged teenagers attending the best secondary schools in the country, the pipeline continues unchecked because the education system fails to see it. According to a recent cross-sectional study conducted within four of the biggest public universities in Bangladesh, 16 percent of university students were currently consuming some form of substance, and 25 percent had done so at some point in their lives. Even the Department of Narcotics Control in Bangladesh has recognized the dramatic rise in substance abuse among the country’s youth population.

It is not just the fact that children are becoming addicted, but that the very administration that is supposed to safeguard them has no awareness of their agony. If a child is absent from classes, the administrative process is nothing more than a transactional one. It records the child simply as “withdrawn” from classes. The cause behind such behavior is easily lumped into some preconceived reasons, such as financial problems, moving elsewhere, or working for an income. The child struggling with the agonizing ordeal of chemical dependency gets registered in the same way as the child who withdrew from classes to earn money for their family business.

This inability to take into consideration the complexity of the situation means there can be no real intervention. The needs are misdiagnosed: the child leaving school because they are poor needs some form of financial assistance, whether in the form of stipends, free textbooks, or meals. But the child struggling with addiction needs psychological counseling and behavioral therapy, which do not exist within the secondary education system. Bangladesh has a functional anti-narcotics system and an educational policy, but both exist in total disconnect from each other. They have no exchange of information, personnel, or shared objectives. The student who falls between the cracks of these two policies becomes nobody’s responsibility, forcing families to go through their difficult and stigmatized ordeal alone.

Addressing the problems in this broken pipeline does not necessarily require the establishment of new bureaucratic departments or unrealistic budget allocations. What is required is a clear moral sense, human empathy, and a shift in three institutional directions. First, behavioral measures should be integrated into education monitoring. Administrative frameworks of educational institutions must include confidential measures that allow the classification of health and behavioral problems related to students’ dropout. The allocation of necessary funds and professional medical assistance will become possible by replacing general assumptions with clear data.

Second, mental health experts should be integrated into secondary schools. Teachers have much material to study and usually do not receive enough training to identify early signs of traumatic experiences, solvent abuse, and drug addiction. Secondary schools should gradually integrate certified behavioral specialists who can recognize potential problem areas and keep children on track with their education.

Third, a referral system from schools to healthcare services should be created for at-risk children. School administrations must have a clear pathway for assisting children at risk. In cases where a child is experiencing problems with substance abuse, the school administration should help them access accredited adolescent healthcare and rehabilitation centers.

A child dropping out of school owing to an untreated substance addiction is unlikely to make the headlines of any major newspaper across the nation. They are never part of discussions pertaining to curriculum reform or standardized tests that take place at the administrative level. Instead, such children quietly disappear into the background of vibrant cities and sleepy rural areas, leaving behind their great potential forever.

To build a resilient and equitable future for Bangladesh, we must consider the needs of people who go unnoticed and remain ignored. Substance abuse among young people cannot simply be considered a taboo that should be shunned from sight. The fact is that it is one of the biggest public health concerns facing the country right now.