Do more to stem drug abuse among teenagers

While addressing participants during just-concluded drama festivals in Bungoma, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha challenged parents to spend more time with children instead of giving them money to compensate for their absence. He also advised parents to release their househelps and let their teenage children help in house chores during school holidays. The CS is right. According to a chilling report published in this newspaper, children as young as nine are lured into drug abuse by people known to them.

They could be teachers, classmates or that friendly shopkeeper in the estate or the village. And it begins with an innocent puff, sip or even chewing a twig of miraa. Soon, the young and impressionable teenager is trapped into long-running addiction. Having no money of their own, the entrapped young man or woman, is forced to engage in petty crime to sustain the addiction. When things become difficult at home, the addict is forced to join big-time crime and soon that young and disciplined son or daughter is hooked to the underworld. It sounds simple, but drug abuse has devastated hundreds of families and turned thousands of youth into cabbage.