Po­lice of­fi­cers who warn chil­dren with drugs should pass the in­for­ma­tion on to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh says.

He made the rec­om­men­da­tion dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous bill.

He said li­ais­ing with the min­istry was need­ed so as to pro­vide scruti­ny in case these chil­dren may al­so be sell­ing drugs in school.

Deyals­ingh said there’s more to wor­ry about with Chi­na apart from COVID-19 be­cause of 2019 stud­ies show­ing sev­er­al types of im­i­ta­tion drugs were be­ing man­u­fac­tured in that coun­try.

He said in the COVID sit­u­a­tion, peo­ple with psy­chi­atric prob­lems were “reach­ing out”.

He said the Men­tal Health act need­ed beef­ing up to cater to this dy­nam­ic.

Deyals­ingh al­so said he was “scared” since there are new drugs on the mar­ket apart from mar­i­jua­na and al­co­hol. He not­ed the min­istry state­ments on ad­dic­tive drugs called “Mol­lies” and “Ec­sta­sy.”

“This is a dif­fer­ent ball game, chil­dren are at risk,” he said, not­ing deal­ers would seek new com­modi­ties to of­fer if small quan­ti­ties of mar­i­jua­na, for in­stance, can now be plant­ed.

Deyals­ingh al­so rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple who are cru­el to an­i­mals be sent for psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat not­ed that penal­ties for an­i­mal cru­el­ty were in­creased since there is a lot of this prob­lem in T&T.

Penal­ties moved from a $400 fine and two months’ jail to $100,000 and a year’s jail.

He said an­i­mal wel­fare’s been very top­i­cal in T&T for a long time but laws had been in force for the last 67 years. Ramb­harat said an­i­mals work­ing in sec­tors had rights al­so.

In leg­is­la­tion on pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, he said claus­es in­clud­ed as­pects to en­sure work­ing an­i­mals were cared for prop­er­ly.