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The video clip widely spread on social media of two children drinking alcohol in public in Harare city centre recently worried a lot of people with several major concerns being expressed, at least by the rational among the viewers.
There was that sense of outrage or despair that this sort of thing can happen on the city streets without anyone taking action, except to shoot a video and display it.
Hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, must have seen the two children drinking and not one of them sought help. Some of those walking past must have been police officers.
Once the images went public, the police did take action, and appropriate action. They found out who the children were, where they lived, who their parents were and what they were doing on the street.
As is often the case in such circumstances there was an element of a dysfunctional family and other private problems. We hope that someone is taking some action in that regard, and that those two young children can be helped to get back onto the right path and will make something of their lives rather than just end up as casualties of drink and drugs.
But the fact remains that someone, almost certainly an adult, supplied the children with alcohol, giving it to them because he thought it was funny or selling it to them because he wanted money.
That supplier is the one who needs to face the law and if there is any degree of vagueness in our liquor law, then we need to tighten it up.
The chairperson of the national committee on drug and substance abuse, Minister of Defence Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, fortunately saw the main problem in the clearest possible light, that the person responsible and to blame, or at least most responsible, was the supplier, the person who handed over the bottles of alcohol to a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old.
And that is the person who the Minister wants to see arrested and prosecuted.
Alcohol might be a legal substance, at least when sold to adults, but it can still be abused just as much as any illegal drug so the comments on the need to hunt down the illegal suppliers of abused drugs and substances make perfect sense, as does her anger when the suppliers are targeting children.
The basic Zimbabwean policy has been to concentrate enforcement on disrupting the supply chain, rather than just try and garner statistics by hunting down users, and the police have taken a practical approach that users caught in the enforcement net are often allowed to escape with a deposit fine, while the suppliers are held and taken to court.
This differs from some jurisdictions where law enforcement seems to just want to maximise the number arrested, and is quite happy to gather up users while letting the sellers escape.
And we have courts in those countries that like to impose harsh sentences on users.
In Zimbabwe we do split the two groups and try and make sure that the police are going after the right people, those that create the damage by supplying the drugs and those who make their money by exploiting the addictions and weaknesses of others.
Obviously those seen and caught using drugs should be taken down to the station, but the main effort and the detective work needs to be on the supply chain.
The judiciary, in the persons of the magistrates trying the dealers, are not afraid of handing down some fairly stiff sentences, in many cases a term of imprisonment, as the dealers are wheeled before them and that in itself should start helping to persuade others not to follow and join the business themselves.
Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri also wanted a lot more community effort. She was disturbed, we think, about the lack of action of all those who saw what was happening and just shrugged it off.
She rightly sees families and communities as vital in the war on drug and substance abuse, that in fact we all have some responsibility for our neighbour and for others, and at the very least can inform the relevant authorities when we see something going seriously wrong.
Most people dislike becoming “involved” but there must be limits to our reluctance to just pass by on the other side of the road.
As the Minister noted, there are hot lines to phone these days, and there cannot be many Zimbabwean adults who do not carry a mobile phone.
Surely when we see children in trouble we can and should take action, and at the very least make that vital phone call so someone who cares more knows what is going on and will do something.
Drug and substance abuse became a serious growing problem largely because so many saw what was going on and decided that there was nothing they could do, or wanted to do, or were afraid to do. And when that happens, when good people do nothing, then evil can flourish.
Of course resources are limited. Zimbabwe is not a rich country. But that does mean there are zero resources, only that we must use what do have intelligently and effectively.
After some thought this is precisely what the police are now doing, using their detection and main anti-drug resources to hunt down dealers and peddlers, while dealing more leniently with the users who get caught up in the net, hopefully after questioning them on where, when and from whom they obtained the drugs.
In fact we could easily advance the user-leniency policy by restricting it to those users who are very co-operative when questioned, and who are willing to at least listen to where they obtain help to fight any growing addiction they might have.
The war on drugs and substance abuse does require a community and co-operative effort.
The authorities can and are taking ever more effective action, but at the very least they need information from the public, that “acting on information received” that starts a lot of police public reports, and community action can do a lot to help abusers get back on the right path, or even better not to deviate into side-streets that will simply lead to major problems and failure.
Walking on the other side of the road, ignoring problems even when these involve children, is not going to solve anything. And often involvement can simply be a phone call to a hotline number.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter