Drug addiction

The current trend of substance abuse among youth and especially school age children is troubling. Many
fingers have been pointed at the youth themselves while at the same time ignoring the very people who abet
the youth’s drug habits, and wantonly purvey rot among the youth. These are generally cohorts of the middle
aged and adults, including parents, in whose care the young generation lives are presumably placed.

The height of societal breakdown and decadence comes when the older generation fails to live up to their
responsibility and duty of guiding the younger generation. For example, it is not surprising to witness these
so-called adults and parents appallingly and unashamedly fondle each other in many early programmes
prowling our television screens, to the detriment of young people’s mentality. It is then surprising to hear the
very same people and their ilk often asking where the current festering decadence among the youth came
from.

In Kenya, many upcoming musicians would rather pour out their presumed tales of perversion, sexual
orgies, drugs and alcohol abuse at their audiences rather than songs which can help better the youth folk’s
and human life for now and the future. Indeed, many would rather spend the meagre cash they accrue from
singing on perpetuating alcohol and drug abuse and engrafting sexual orgies, escapades, romps and
perversion than use it for their personal development. Then you ask why many Africans continue to remain
poor, suffer and die from HIV/AIDS!

Drug peddlers and barons are increasingly targeting the youth, a symbol of freshness and revolution, who
they seek to sacrifice at the altar of money and mental derangement. Self- seeking and clamouring for the
minds and souls of the young people, these drug peddlers have no regard for the consequences of their
bloodied actions. Many youths have committed suicide in the malicious tents of pathological drug abuse and
mortal misinformation, not being able to distinguish the concords of life from the discords.

Hearing a mother’s tearful testimony of the death of her only son, apparently a casualty of addiction like
many other similar tales, one would ask whether there really is any human feeling left among drug peddlers
and the advocates of drug abuse. Currently, drugs ranging from alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine,
heroin to hashish and many others are readily available to young children and the youth in Kenya more or so
among the university and college going lot. Weekends usher in festive moods among the students and one
would see many of them inebriated, bloodshot eyed and yet others visibly drunk, either sleeping in their
rooms, staggering into campuses or lying on lawns in a hectic and pathetic aura of drugs. These are often
punctuated with days and nights of irresponsible sexual orgies throwing them to the eerie dungeons of
HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections.

Many are the deaths from road accidents and HIV/AIDS infections that are directly adduced to drug abuse
and addiction. These portend a great economic problem to the majority of the third world where
development aspirations are generally pegged on manpower and expertise, which is currently wanted in
these countries.

It is pitiful that drug peddlers lead the youth into temptations through the advertised byways of the
wilderness of ‘glamour’ where the youth are deluded until their minds acquire a mis-educated appetite for
more drugs and strong drink thereby becoming loathsome sots, poor and sometimes ending up in caskets.

Manufacturers of drugs have unwittingly brought in the mortal mind, of a higher attenuation than the drugs,
which governs their sales. One would thus hear of adverts such as, “as clear as your conscience”, “strength
after a hard day’s work”, “smooth all the way”, "clean coke" and many other deceptive platitudes imposed
and ‘nobly’ bestowed on alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs to the detriment of the misinformed youth.

Our youth are dying morally, socially, psychologically and physically from drug abuse and addiction as the
drug barons and peddlers bask in the dark glory of plagued monetary gains amid the incessant catastrophe.
Many are now asking whether the relevant authorities are doing enough, with revelations that law
enforcement agents are being bribed by drug barons so as to allow them to perpetuate their illicit trade. The
duty of parents in looking after their youth has also come into serious focus here. Before anything else,
parental care is the most important control and preventive measure against drug abuse and addiction. Are
they, the parents, really doing enough to guide and be with their children at all times? Who is going to come
up with legislation, which effectively outlaws drugs? Are our youth going to be left at the mercy of drug
dealers?