Amy Jade Winehouse was a talent and a tragic figure. Her entry into the music bloc was a loud drop with a biggish promise. Pundits predicted that Winehouse would be a winner.

But some other icons had also predicted that this British act may not live beyond 27. They were all correct.

Winehouse won. And Winehouse died. Tragically, at 27. Without doubt, from overdose of drugs. Doctors may have other names to give it.

My concern here is the fact that Amy Winehouse represents a grim picture of the gale of drug addiction that is taking over our children. Here was a girl whose first album, Frank, released in 2003, received critical acclaim and nominated for the Mercy Prize. Her contralto voice at 20, reinvigorated soul music and inspired British female artistes.

Then came her second album, Back to Black, in 2006. The whole world stood still as Winehouse, then 23, was nominated for six Grammy Awards. She went home with five, including three of the big four-Best New Artiste, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year.

But while Winehouse was on music’s hilltop, a pedestal of respect and honour as she received her awards, her descent into the abyss of history’s trash seemed an inevitability. This was sadly so because this undoubted genius was already in a fierce battle with drug addiction.

Her case was so bad that Natalie King-Cole, who was also battling drugs when she received a Grammy in 1975, remarked that organisers of the Awards should begin to pay attention to ethics. Her language appeared caustic as she lamented that Winehouse was certainly not a fetching symbol of what a Grammy Award winner should be.

About 4.35 pm, on Saturday, July 23, this gifted child, the only British artiste to ever win five awards in a Grammy, a soul singer of perpetual hype, died. It was in Camden, London.

The slip into eternal silence of this British brand, evokes memories of great celebrities that walked this long wilderness of shame and died from the heat of success versus personal turmoil. I remember Elvis Presley, Jimmy Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, Ike Turner, and Anna Nicole Smith. They all started a good race but ended up in the gulf of unfulfilled dream and destiny.

But today, I am more concerned about our youth, our God-given children as the fate of Amy Winehouse seems to loom over them. There are allegations that about 48 per cent of our youths in most private universities in Nigeria suffer from drug addiction and about 35 per cent from state and federal universities.

My decision to write this piece was indeed spurred by a horrific phone call I received only recently. A young man that has clung to me for over ten years and makes me feel like a mentor, had called me about 10.30pm. He sounded desperate. A dazzling beauty he had introduced to me as his fiancée had visited. They were planning to see her parents for a formal introduction. She was a girl of the highbrow, articulate with a cut of class. You will thank God for a wife of such blissful aura.

This damsel, about 10.00pm had told her fiancé she wanted to use the bathroom. Like a guy with some romantic hue, Danny as I often call him, walked her to the room and waited in bed. But 20 minutes later, his girl was still in the bathroom. Anxious, he walked to the door and called her several times. No reply. With 30 minutes gone without a sound, he called me. Having seen the girl about three times and sensing some unusual switch in her moods, I had come out straight to ask him: “Is your fiancée on drugs?” His reply? “God forbid!”

When Danny, however, forced the door to the bathroom open, he found his fiancée sprawled out on the floor, dazed, far gone in her drug infested world. By the next day, my boy’s fiancée would confess her addiction to cocaine- N75,000, a dose! It was a ‘modest’ habit she picked from one of the private universities at 16. She would confirm the allegation that indeed, over 48 per cent of our youth in the campuses across the nation are hooked on drugs.

For me, the sad story of Danny’s fiancée raises a conscience question for our society. We seem to have lost our values completely. We worship money and celebrate criminals. We snigger at men of honour and intellectual accomplishments because they do not throw naira around. There are no role models any more. Some of our children return from school to discover that their lower middle class parents they left only a few months back, had turned to multi-millionaires overnight. They walk into a hitherto empty room in the house to behold millions of naira, dollars and pounds in bags, briefcases and naked wads.

If the parents do not give them more than they need as is often the case, they steal from the excess at home. Which ever way, they have idle cash on their hands. Life for them becomes one huge binge. And they embark on a long odyssey that often ends in self-destruction.

Even in secondary schools today, we see the same worrisome development, images of misguided children, as parents in an attempt to flaunt their wealth indulge their children. Or how does one explain a situation where a 13-year-old pupil in his third year in Junior Secondary School (JSS 3) comes to school with a Black Berry (Touch) that costs about N125,000, or wear a designer watch with a minimum cost of N250,000.

These same children sit at home to watch cable television channels and use the internet without parental guidance. With absolute freedom to choose their behavioural patterns and money to finance their zesty dreams, these young people, our portfolio of human capital zoom into the highway to hell of drug addiction. And the consequence of this squandering of our youth will be a nation on a darkening plain or at best with a gloomy future.

My concern for our fickle young people is perhaps best captured by Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. According to him, the alleged drug habits of Amy Winehouse and other celebrities send a bad message “to others who are vulnerable to addiction and undermine the efforts of other celebrities trying to raise awareness in Africa now that more cocaine used in Europe passes through Africa”.

This rather long epistle is therefore a solemn call on the federal and state governments as well as Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to intensify the campaign against drug abuse. Parents too need to be vigilant. Amidst our choked schedule, we must find time for family knowing that where one out of even 20 children is addicted to drugs, the peace of the home is murdered.

We have a solemn responsibility to save ourselves, our children and indeed our society from the turmoil and fury of drug addiction. Believe me, you may never be able to quantify the agony, the pain that a once adorable daughter or son, now an addict, brings to the home.

Mr. Zulu Okafor, an award-winning journalist and scholar, wrote from Lagos