DRUGS: THE GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED THE PEOPLE

Nairobi

The war against drug abuse in school is, on paper, everyone's war. The
government for instance decries, at the top of its voice, the abuse of drugs
in schools and attributes the recent wave of school unrest to drug abuse.

But this is all it does. Lets examine what it has done in way of fighting
drug abuse. The previous government established the National Campaign
Against Drug Abuse (Nacada) whose remit was to establish the extent of drug
abuse in the country. This was a positive step and, by all standards, Nacada
under Joseph Kaguthi and now under Roselyne Onyuka as acting director, has
done a good job. It has brought us staggering statistics of drug abuse in
this country. But this is all the law allows it to do. Nacada's work is only
to warn us of the presence of a fox but it has no authority to arrest the
fox or put up the fences to prevent us from wandering towards where the fox
is. The work of arresting and prosecuting lies elsewhere.

In 1994 the government enacted a law mandating the ministry of health to set
up rehabilitation centres for drug abusers. None, so far has been
established. The result is that there are more and more drug abusers in the
country but very few, if any, is being rehabilitated.

Worse, the government knows it for a fact that drug use is widespread in
schools. But apart from lamenting, alongside all other Kenyans, it is doing
virtually nothing to arrest this problem. Yet it has all the powers to do
something. Why, the people of Kenya must ask, is the government letting down
the young generation in this fashion? Statistics show that millions of
students and school leavers under 29 abuse drugs. Most of the strikes and
destruction of property in schools are attributed to drug use. Yet in the
light of these glaring facts, the government has shown an appalling
ambivalence towards the fight against drugs. In the light of these
inescapable facts, this is one country that does not have rehabilitation
centres for alcohol and drug abuse. And we say we have a future?

The future is in the youth. But most of our youth are living in a hopeless
present, having chugged forward from a desperate past and now are facing a
destroyed future. Every day the government pays lip service to this problem,
a critical nail in our coffin as a society is driven.