admin
The new committee structure being set up by the Government, and approved by the Cabinet this week, to fight what they correctly call the scourge of drug and substance abuse is designed to fight this menace on a wide range of fronts and not be dazzled by simple and ineffective possible solutions.
The committees, right from community level through the district and provincial committees all the way to the main national committee, are being given set timelines, so that they push action rather than talk, but the thrust is one fixing the problem rather than just taking the easy action of arresting and jailing users.
The main thrusts are search and rescue, that is finding the users and addicts, then rehabilitation, which means getting them out of their abusive lifestyle and giving them the medical and other treatment they need to fight their addiction, and then resilience and sustainability, that is keeping them off drugs over the short, medium and long term.
At the same time, the security and police efforts, and with the national committee chaired by the Minister of Defence and War Veterans Affairs with the Minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage as her deputy, is definitely not being ignored.
It is fairly obvious that almost all of the more dangerous drugs are imported, smuggled into the country, but that Zimbabwean drug lords, those at the top of the distribution chains, are the main recipients of the worst drugs and get them down through chains of dealers to the final users. We read of drug busts where kilogrammes of heroin and cocaine are intercepted, enough to create tens of thousands of doses as the bottom of the ladder.
The amount of crystal meth swanning around suggests well organised smuggling and distribution chains. This could be manufactured locally, but that still entails smuggling in the raw materials, so either way there is a lot of external supply. What tends to happen with a substantial chunk of the crystal meth is the local admixtures created, with other drugs mostly illegal added to bulk out the imported supply.
We should not ignore the less dangerous drugs, mbanje which is largely grown in the country, with growers ranging from someone with one or two plants all the way to the commercial criminals with hectares of the stuff. We also have people brewing and distilling illegal alcoholic drinks. Excise duties besides raising tax money also raise prices, which tends to moderate use and make people think twice about starting down that road.
So while there is a lot of stress at the lower levels on helping users get back on their feet and moving from the road to ruin to a road for life, and at the same time building support in communities towards identifying dealers and persuading people not to take drugs or start down the road, as we move up the ladder there is increasing stress on the interdiction of supplies and hunting down the major drug lords who grow rich building their distribution empires.
All the committees from the lowest to the national include a lot more than Government or local government officials. Faith based organisations, the churches and others, plus the traditional leadership, medical workers and others are included, basically the leaders and workers of all who recognise the dangers and want to help fix the problem.
It is obvious that many lessons have been learned in the few months since the drive against drug abuse started in a very serious way with high priority with the results of those lessons being incorporated into the committee structures.
Groups who have shown that they are useful are being empanelled so they be more effective.
There are also some myths that need to be punctured. There are people who suggest that the main reasons why youths move into the drug culture are related to poverty and lack of jobs. Well yes, those are reasons, but hardly exclusive.
We also, rather notoriously, had a group of sixth form pupils from an established private school caught with mbanje on a school trip at the beginning of the year. Once again jumping to a conclusion that intelligent teenagers from families that by Zimbabwean standards are comfortably off are most at risk would be daft, but it does confirm that no one is exempt from temptation, and that the drug scourge carries across all social and economic groups. There are no “thems”, only us.
We would suspect that every religious organisation will have among its members those who use illegal drugs, and those who get drunk on alcohol, and that none are exempt no matter what some in leadership might think. About the only generalisation that perhaps can be made is that poorer people will tend to abuse cheaper drugs and richer people will mix in some of the most expensive drugs. But even here there will joint use.
So there are no special targets and no single solutions when we look at the problem at community, district, provincial or national level. Almost anyone can be tempted and succumb, and even the feeling that the younger generations are most at risk must be treated cautiously.
Yes there might be more experimentation at this level, with more of older generations having passed through that phase, and also seen some of their contemporaries destroyed by drugs and alcoholism. We can grow wiser as we grow older, but that is a result, at least in the drug culture, of survivors recognising their luck and not wanting to join the ruined and the dead.
As with so many efforts to solve social problems, it needs people to be treated as individuals, with their own problems and own special needs. This means a lot of one-on-one action to “search and rescue” and then persuade users to seek rehabilitation, which means a range of services need to be available, and be willing to play their part by naming their dealers and suppliers.
This is where the other side comes in, breaking the supply chains and interdicting the supplies, and those involved in the trade at this level can be taken out of circulation with prison sentences, something less than useful at the base level of users. But we need to remember that one of the best ways of killing the drug trade is to stop people using the stuff, if there is no demand there is no business.
That will possibly be almost impossible, although we can and must slash demand, one user at a time, while we also limit supplies, through hunting down our own illegal mbanje farmers and catching the smugglers as they sneak over our borders or land at our airports.
The Government, with the multi-front approach, the assigning of a respectable budget of $500 million, the use of the committees to co-ordinate the efforts of the whole range of those of goodwill, and the setting of targets and timelines, has created the right approach to tackle what is not an easy problem and certainly not a simple problem.
Online Reporter