Combating A Silent, Massive Destroyer

 Consuming illegal drugs and exaggerating those that are legal are both detrimental, reason why all must work in synergy to curb its cultivation, trafficking and intake.

If there is one thing that Cameroonians of goodwill can agree on; irrespective of where they hail from, then it is the nefarious consequences of drug abuse. Be they legal such as alcohol, tobacco…, or unlawful like cannabis, unauthorised tramadol, Diazepam, benzodiapines, cocaine, etc., consuming them greatly jeopardizes the life of citizens and the socio-economic development of the country.

Recent statistics by officials of the Technical Secretariat of the Inter-ministerial Committee for the Fight against the Cultivation of Marijuana are, to say the least, frightening.

According to Anatole Maina, Coordinator of the Technical Secretariat, “60 per cent of youths, aged 20 to 25, regardless of their places of residence, have consumed drugs.” More disturbing are startling revelations that, “ some 12,000 school-going youths especially aged 13 to 15 consume cannabis which is the hardest drug youths consume, followed by unauthorised tramol or tramadol.”

When one examines in detail the destructive consequences of these drugs and looks at the behaviour of the addicts, there is every reason to worry.

There have been repeated cases of gendarmerie crackdown on lawless citizens either cultivating or trafficking the drugs. How successful the onslaught has been may be difficult to measure. But from every indication, old habits are hard to die.

Reason why reports of students caught misbehaving on and off campus after taking drugs, crime wave on a rise and diverse drug-triggered misdemeanors have not ceased to animate household talks and media debates. Knowledge, they say, is power and the absence of it leads to destruction.

Thus, wide-ranging crusade against the cultivation and or fabrication, spread and irresponsible consumption of the drugs, like what an inter-ministerial committee is doing at moment, is certainly laudable. It has at least the propensity to win back many who might have been peer-pressured into consuming the dangerous substances. Better late, they say, than never.

Government’s announcement that several ministries will be brought into drafting diverse youth-empowerment programmes could offer alternatives to the sometimes idle perpetrators of the drugs.  Promoting the cultivation of alternative crops that are of a high marketing value and hav...