DRUG ABUSE CASES UP

Nairobi

Drug abuse has reached alarming levels and should be declared a national
disaster.

The National Agency Campaign Against Drug Abuse (Nacada) said yesterday
that 75 per cent of young people aged between 20 and 25 were on hard drugs.

The agency's acting national co-ordinator, Mrs Roseline Onyuka, said
another 68 per cent of youth aged between 15 and 20 were hooked to drugs.

Onyuka further said 20 per cent of Kenyans aged between 20 and 40 were also
hooked to drugs ranging from cigarettes to heroine and cocaine.

She said 20 to 30 per cent of all secondary school students in Kenya had
tasted one form of drug or another, 15 per cent were already addicted to at
least one drug while five per cent were addicted to an imported hard drug.

Onyuka said drug abuse was a silent disaster and had become a major
challenge the country has to deal with, adding it was time to break the
conspiracy of silence.

She said drug abuse should be declared a national disaster before it gets
out of control, saying silence was what had abetted the fast spread of
HIV/Aids.

She made the remarks at a Nyeri hotel during a training of trainers on drug
abuse for personnel from the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC).

Onyuka said drug abuse had claimed many lives and was closely linked with
the prevalence of HIV/Aids. She said the youth were the main culprits of
the escalating drug abuse.

Onyuka, a career educationist, said the future of any country depended on
the quality of education, discipline and moral standards of its youth.

Nyeri District Medical Officer of Health (MoH) Dr Isaac Kimani, who opened
the seminar, said health workers were abetting the spread of drug abuse.

He said some of the most abused drugs were family planning pills,
especially the morning after pill, with the main consumers being young women.

Kimani said if the trend was not checked many such women would not be able
to bear children.