Speaking to FMT, Pengasih founder and president Yunus Pathi said teenagers would often start with drugs they could buy on the street.

“When they cannot afford to buy them, they go online and look up drug recipes which can give them a similar high to those they can buy on the street.”

He said there were numerous websites and forums which could teach anyone how to “cook” their own drugs.

“So if they don’t have enough money to buy methamphetamine (syabu), they look for a recipe online on the computer or smartphone and go to the nearest hardware store to buy the ingredients they need.”

These ingredients, he said, included paint thinners and glue. These were inexpensive and easily available.

Yunus said drugs were also being advertised and sold through social networking apps.

“The pushers will use a drug’s ‘street name’ as their status or logos. All a person needs to do is contact them.”

He also said, based on feedback he had received from Pengasih’s residents, drugs were easily available on the street.

“In the past, people would look for drug pushers. They would go to them because they wouldn’t want the pushers to know where they lived.”

Now, however, many users would opt for a “delivery” service where the pushers would go straight to the homes of the users and pass them the drugs.

“It is just too easy to get drugs. Of course, people will be tempted to point fingers, but who do you blame?”

“Do you pin all the blame on the cops, the communications and multimedia ministry for not blocking the sites, or the Education Department for failing to stem the habit? It would be unfair to do so.”

Yunus said this was because drug abuse and addiction happened everywhere in the world. The cure to this social ill lay in education and awareness.

“When it comes to drugs, prevention really is the best cure and it has to start at home with the parents.”

Yunus said he hoped the government would clamp down on the websites which provide “recipes” for cooking drugs.

He also hoped the government would consider putting controls on hardware shops so that minors could not buy industrial materials to cook drugs.

Earlier this year, the home ministry revealed that 131,841 drug addicts were registered between January 2010 and February this year.

Of that number, 127,797 were men and 4,044 women.

Pengasih is the only drug and addiction rehabilitation centre in Malaysia which is wholly operated by former drug users.