Editorial
Yet another brutal killing! That was in Kotahena. The headlines have almost become routine — another alleged underworld figure gunned down, another drug bust exposing shocking faces behind respectable masks. But the recent arrest of a school principal in Eppawala for drug trafficking has shaken even the most jaded citizens. When the person entrusted with shaping children’s values turns out to be a key player in the heroin trade, Sri Lanka must stop pretending these are isolated scandals. This is not just crime; it is a collapse of conscience.
The man was no ordinary offender. A principal — a symbol of trust and discipline — caught with over a kilogram of heroin hidden behind his hotel property, running what police now say was part of a sophisticated narcotics network. His wife, a local councillor from the ruling coalition, and their son, already behind bars for drug possession, complete a family portrait of corruption at every level. This isn’t a story about politics; it’s about a system that allows such decay to thrive under the very nose of those meant to protect the nation’s children.
The greater tragedy, however, lies not in one man’s betrayal but in what it reveals about the society around him. In the same week this case made headlines, reports emerged from the Gampaha district of a ninth-grade girl selling her body for a few hundred rupees, and of schoolchildren running online groups where sexual images were traded like collectibles. The victims are barely teenagers — children who should be worrying about exams and cricket practice, not blackmail and shame. What kind of country forces its youth into such darkness while adults scroll past the news as if it were a weather report?
The connection between these stories is more than coincidence. Drugs, exploitation, and moral erosion are three sides of the same rotting pyramid. When narcotics seep into classrooms, when mobile phones become tools of humiliation instead of education, when public figures are caught in the same vices they are supposed to fight — what moral ground is left for a child to stand on? These are not “social issues” to be discussed at seminars. They are alarms ringing in a burning house.
And where is the leadership? Education Minister Harini Amarasuriya has yet to make any tangible contributions, and her focus on curriculum reform and digital learning risks coming across as little more than another piece of propaganda, all while remaining silent on this spreading moral epidemic. We cannot redesign syllabuses while ignoring the demons haunting the playground. Reforming textbooks will not save children who are being groomed online, trapped by addiction, or corrupted by the adults they trust most.
The government’s silence is mirrored by a cultural hypocrisy that runs deep. Turn on any evening teledrama and you’ll find infidelity romanticized, violence justified, and vanity celebrated as virtue. Producers defend it as “entertainment,” but when entire generations grow up watching deceit rewarded and decency mocked, the boundary between fiction and morality dissolves. Parents complain, but few change the channel. The same families who express outrage at child exploitation are the ones consuming content that normalizes it.
This moral disorientation is not accidental. It thrives in a country where public outrage is short-lived and accountability is a headline, not a habit. Each scandal passes like a wave, leaving behind only cynicism. When a principal can traffic drugs, when children can be exploited online for pocket change, and when ministers can stay silent through it all — that is not failure; that is complicity through apathy.
We keep avoiding the unavoidable and avoiding what must not be avoided. The unavoidable truth is that Sri Lanka’s crisis is no longer only economic or political — it is ethical. And the avoidable tragedy is that we are letting an entire generation drown in it while we debate reforms and ratings. Unless the Education Ministry, the National Child Protection Authority, and the media industry unite in action — not committees, not statements — this decay will metastasize beyond repair.
Every child exploited, every addict recruited, every teacher corrupted is a wound on the nation’s conscience. To heal it, we must begin where it hurts most: in the schools, in the families, and in the homes that look away. The principal’s arrest is not the end of a story — it is the opening line of a warning that demands to be heard. Because if we continue to ignore it, we won’t just lose our children; we will lose the very idea of what it means to be a civilized society.
