Jamaica Gleaner Lead Stories

Published: Monday Sunday | July 19, 2009

Fragile at 15 - Would you run away from home?
Each year, hundreds of teenage girls go missing in Jamaica, but later return home. The figures dance around age 15. The Sunday Gleaner engaged two groups of teenagers between the ages of 14 and 16 in conversation, and both boys and girls shared common views on the issues they face at home. Read More...

The people's business - Parliament or patty shop?
THERE IS an old Jamaican saying - 'when trouble tek yuh, pickney shut fit yuh'. It's a proverb, no doubt, born out of the need to act quickly and decisively in the darkest hours. Sadly though, it seems that the saying is one that our parliamentarians - especially those in the House of Representatives - have never heard before. Read More...

At risk!
THEY ARE about 15 years old, troubled, and on the brink. Many have made the decision to take matters - and their feet - into their own hands, and run. Recent data from the National Investigation Bureau of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) show that between June 2008 and June 2009, more than 1,200 teens between ages 13 and 17 years have run away from home. Read More...

Why we run
CROSSING THE threshold from adolescence into adulthood is a giant step for teens. Running away from home, reasons a group of teenagers, is "an attempted escape from that period in your life". According to the teens, the need for greater freedom, social connection, financial independence, all added to the anxiety to excel academically, is burdensome. Read More...

The price of indignity:$6m - Government pays for false imprisonment, malicious prosecution
HE GOVERNMENT is to pay $6 million with interest to a man who was freed by the Court of Appeal in 2003 after spending almost three years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Neville Williams, a 28-year-old, construction worker of Maryland, St Andrew, who was convicted of rape and sentenced in May 2001 to seven years' imprisonment, had filed the suit in the Supreme Court. Read More...

Popping painkillers - 99% of abusers misused pain relievers
Painkillers are the pill of choice for abusers of prescription drugs in Jamaica. The worrying statistic was revealed in a countrywide study conducted in 2001, which revealed that approximately 40 per cent of respondents admitted to misusing painkillers that required a prescription. Read More...

Officially clueless - Financial constraints keep health officials in the dark about the number of Jamaicans abusing prescription drugs
You think they know, but they have no idea. Senior local health officials have admitted that prescription drug abuse is a growing problem in Jamaica, but they are clueless as to how huge the problem is. Read More...

Prescribed high - Addicted to doctor-recommended medication
MANY MEDICINE cabinets are morphing into private drug dens as an increasing number of Jamaicans are abusing prescription medications. Dr Ellen Campbell-Grizzle, director of information and research at the National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA), told The Sunday Gleaner that prescription abuse was a "growing problem" on the island ... Read More...

The people's business - The burden of leadership
ORMER NATIONAL security minister Dr Peter Phillips said that Jamaica had wasted some of its life as an independent nation and blamed successive governments since 1962 for not doing enough to advance the cause of Jamaicans. Read More...