Fight SA’s drug and drink culture

BY ANTHONY GATHAMBIRI IMC

One evening I was jogging. It was getting dark and so I decided to take a shortcut

through a local township. As I entered the place, I saw two young boys of less than 12 years smoking from a pipe connected to a pot.

“Our families are crumbling because alcohol has enslaved men and women. ” (CNS photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Reuters)

They were smoking with a grown-up guy who I would guess was in his twenties. There was a terrible smell of the fumes of marijuana. It made me reflect on the extent of the drug scourge in South Africa.

We have a serious problem that needs addressing. We risk having a hopeless generation if we don’t do something. The presidents of tomorrow, the teachers of tomorrow, the priests and nuns of tomorrow will depend on the society of today.

Many students get hooked on drugs through peer influence. They become slaves to drugs, and often this leads them to steal and sell goods, even those belonging to their loved ones, in order to quench their craving for drugs.

Much of the crime in South Africa is drug-related. An ex-offender who spent nine years behind bars for stealing cars was quoted in The Sowetan in July. He said that he had stolen 85 cars in the space of just three months — an average of almost one a day. He confessed that drugs and alcohol made him behave badly.

Many other drug addicts have committed suicide because the debts they owed to drug dealers were too huge to clear.

We should encourage initiatives that bring former drug offenders to schools and churches to share their experiences with young people. To receptive ears, they can unveil the hell that one goes through in jail.

Who is selling these drugs to our children? Do we know them, and if we do, why don’t we report them? If we love our communities, isn’t it high time that we cooperated with police to bring the drug dealers to book. These dealers are known and reporting them is a prophetic mission to which we are all obliged.

The fight against drug abuse begins at home. Parents should be role models. When we are telling our children to avoid alcohol—another major problem — but consume it liberally ourselves, then we obviously lose credibility.

Talking about drugs and alcohol abuse in the family can make a big impact on our children, especially when they are young. Parents should frequently discuss substance abuse and the risks involved. But the key is to listen to the children, not to lecture them.

Recently a friend of mine said that some people don’t take water anymore, but beer. He isn’t wrong.

Our families are crumbling because alcohol has enslaved men and women. Alcohol and substance abuse have caused endless fights in families, sometimes violent. Needless to say, health, safety and financial problems can result from alcohol and substance abuse in our families.

At the same time, we need to treat drug and alcohol addicts with compassion, not stigmatise those who are afflicted by it. These are our neighbours. They are the poor who need our help. If we reject them we are no different from the priest and the scholar who passed the man in Jesus’ parable (Lk 10:25-37) who had been beaten by robbers on the dangerous road to Jericho.

We need to listen to their stories without condemning them — and that could be a starting point in helping them overcome the problem.

We can change the world if we start to listen to one another attentively.