By Idrissa Bangura
The Minister of Information and Civic Education, Chernor M. Bah, has put forth government measures to eradicate drug abuse in the country.
His presentation was made in a recent press conference conducted at Foreign Affairs Conference Hall in Freetown on Tuesday, 15th August, 2023.
In his opening statement, the minister said that, they are joining hands with Ministry of Internal Affairs with other drug regulatory agencies to fight against the menace of harmful drug intake in the society.
He stated that this collaborative fight is done to ensuring that the containers of these drugs are trapped and destroyed to cut off the first contact between the dealers and the addicts.
Minister Bah introduced a young lady known as Kadijatu Barrie, who is an active youth activist against drug abuse.
She narrated her experience about the kush saga, saying that she went days back to Dove Cote and saw a large number of youths all around that axis, and while there, she got a first-hand explanation from a lady.
The lady told her that when guys had taken the Kush they become highly resistance to all form of pains.
“These guys wouldn’t feel anything like pain even if they are slapped,” says the lady.
“This manifests the dangerous effect of the drug,” she added.
The activist also mentioned that cases in most hospitals now are kush-related.
She called on collaborative effort by the government, NGOs and community people to stop the import of drugs into the country.
She encouraged youths to focus and embark on empowering themselves because they can only become successful youths when engaging in responsible activities which prepare them to fit into the job market.
She emphasized the need to engage in fruitful human capacity as the job market is highly competitive.
This is because no employer now will want to employ people who are sleeping all over the places, she said.
The drug misuse advocate added that the effect of this drug abuse had increased the number of mental health issues on addicts.
And that has led to a huge number of lunatics to now been taken to Sierra Leone’s only mental home.
In curbing the drug abuse in the country, there have been numerous measures put in place to enforce intensive raiding of drugs cartels and addicts all over the country.
These cases of drug raiding are reported on both radio stations and social media, and similar events of drug crack down were led by Regional Heads of Police in almost all regions in the country.
A case in point, is the effective and efficient role played by the Southern Regional Head, which resulted to the demolition of drug cartels and whose event later led to the arrests, detention and later charge the addicts to court. This is to ensure that the issues of drug related issues are put to a stop so that youths of our society can engage in other meaningful and purposeful areas reasonable to make them become successful.