The title of this column, my dear readers, determines the two topics of which I’m about to write. The title itself speaks volumes about today’s reality in Macedonia. I am aware that this will encounter denial from the government as soon as it comes out, ignoring or explaining that I am exaggerating or it is simply not true, but for what I am writing about, I would like you to take a look around and draw your own conclusions, VMRO-DPMNE’S Vice President Aleksandar Nikoloski writes in a column for Nezavisen.

I would like to use the scandal with MP Pavle Bogoevski only as an occasion to open a much bigger topic than any of my previously written. It’s quite simple – in Macedonia, according to what we hear and see, drugs have never been more widespread, more accessible, mostly because there are a lot of them at a very low price! It is killing our nation. Our children, first of all! Like never before, drugs, mostly cocaine, can be found in middle schools, universities, student dormitories, and, of course, in everything that represents the city’s nightlife. It can be found on the streets, there are drugs in every corner around you. This does not require a separate analysis or knowledge. Anyone who went out in the evening or has had contact with the younger generation can see it for themselves, unfortunately. To make this problem even bigger, dealers who sell drugs have almost no fear, and they do it in plain sight. If in the past they were hiding, now they are selling it publicly. Because no one persecutes, nor arrests them!

Let’s be clear about one thing, drugs have always existed in Macedonia, as they have everywhere else in the world, but not as much as now. If in the past, the “most courageous thing” that pupils or students could do was to get drunk – for which they received punishments when they got home, now it has gone a few unhealthy steps ahead and they start off with cocaine, and their parents are unable to punish them for it, because when they do notice that their child is using, it is probably already too late. There is a whole system of alternative marketing that you are unable to see in the media, but it exists among young people in which cocaine is presented as something that is not that harmful and that it does not cause addiction, nor causes any complications. Of course, all of this is incorrect, but it is presented that way. I write on this topic because I am very worried about the direction we are moving in as a society and as a country, if drugs kill our young generations. The fundamental question here is what exactly is Zaev’s government doing, or not doing, to fight against it?

You can read the entire column by Nikolovski on Nezavisen