Young men walking in small groups head towards Matapi block of flats in Mbare, Harare. There is a popular recording studio nearby where Zimdancehall music is playing at full blast.
BY OBEY MANAYITI
At the turntables various disk-jockeys are playing out hit after hit of the most popular songs within the genre as the crowd swells.
Next to the dilapidated crowded flats, there is a thick plantation of sugar cane and most of the jovial youths disappear into it.
It is quite another world beyond the thick sugarcane plantation. Hordes of youths gather here around a fire. Some are out-shining each other on the dance floor gyrating to the music blasting out from somewhere close. Others are betting syndicates at work trying to raise money to take home at the end of the break of dawn.
Some bouncers, who appear like guards at the place keep moving around vetting suspicious faces while salespeople are busy advertising latest arrivals of a large assortment of drugs being sold and taken here.
The foul smell emanating from raw sewage flowing along the nearby Mukuvisi River does not seem to distract anybody here. Some of the patrons are seated on top of disused sewer pipes.
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A few metres away from the fire, suppliers of the drugs are busy counting the day’s sales, reconciling their figures. The place is just a hive of activity and as we later learnt, it operates 24 hours a day.
This is one of the numerous bases where various drugs including new psychoactive substances (NPS) are being sold together with other highly toxic cough syrups containing as much as 96% alcohol content.
We saw drugs that are administered to hyperactive mental patients being sold here and the youths that bought them take up to 10 times the prescribed doses for violent mental patients.
Such bases are countless in Harare’s high-density suburbs where unemployed youths and other people, including an occasional group of school boys in uniform gather for what they believe is a good pastime.
Cheap intoxicants and medical drugs are heavily abused in Harare and other cities.
New psychoactive substances are sometimes referred to as legal highs and they contain one or more chemical substances which produce similar effects as illegal drugs such as cocaine and cannabis.
They are easily smuggled into the country and have now flooded the streets of Harare where they are sold for as little as 20 cents per tablet of the highly potent drugs.
This has come as a big challenge to public health management in the country.
Most of the youths who spoke to The Standard blamed drug abuse to idleness.
“I started drugs in 2003 when I was still at school but it was mostly marijuana. Later, I was introduced to BronCleer because we take cheap intoxicants. I then started taking it regularly. At first it had some serious side effects on me but now I can handle it.
“Nowadays there is a new type of BronCleer with 96,5% alcohol content and other syrups like Betaco which can be bought over the counter. There are also many other syrups with unique names that we take,” said one of the youths who opened up in confidence.
He said there were other cheap tablets which they called mangemba, mablue or mapink.
“These are very cheap that you can buy a pill for as little as 20 cents. However, it depends on the individual’s capacity to handle them. Someone can take the whole tray with 10 tablets but there is a risk of falling unconscious,” said the youth.
“Sometimes I am hired to provide labour in the construction sector. We work very well under the influence of those drugs. They are easily accessible and affordable that even school-going children can afford them.”
He added: “There is a lot of demand and suppliers are making a lot of money. Young people are driving expensive cars out of profits made from selling the drugs.”
Some of the drug peddlers said although they saw nothing wrong with the drugs, the number of school-going children who were taking these illicit substances was worrisome and most of them could not handle them and ended up with mental problems.
They called on the government or civic society organisations to engage drug users so that they could dissuade school children from taking the drugs.
“It’s easy for me to tell other people, especially those of a younger age that there is a serious problem with drugs. Most of the drugs they can afford are highly toxic and addictive. This can also create employment for us and open up space for rehabilitation,” said one of the youths.
Among the effects of these illicit drugs is uncontrollable vomiting, constipation, drowsiness, confusion, dry mouth, changes of mood, facial flushing and sweating.
A senior government official acknowledged the rampant drug abuse among the youth and said they were looking for funding to do a baseline study.
“We are trying to get funds to do a baseline study so that we properly plan in future. It’s true that the young ones are abusing those drugs and in every street you can see empty bottles of those syrups and at times you will see people sleeping in the open at any time, especially street kids.
“These drugs really affect the brain but we need to do a proper survey,” said Dorcas Sithole who is the deputy director of mental health service and substance abuse in the Health ministry.
She said apart from the medical drugs, the youths were also manufacturing their own drugs by mixing a lot of concoctions with the medical substances.
“Those are very dangerous drugs and we really need to be armed and go into schools to educate them about the dangers of these drugs,” Sithole added.
She confirmed there was an open market for the drugs.
“They can be found on the streets and some of the drugs are coming from neighbouring countries and people take advantage of porous borders to smuggle them into the country,” she said.
Sithole said they were working with law enforcing agents to deal with the issue.
Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drugs Network (ZCLDN) director Wilson Box said Zimbabwe needed a wholesome approach to deal with drug abuse.
“As ZCLDN we view drug abuse in the country as a public health issue and not a criminal one. It is a medical issue that needs scientific research, evidence and promotion of human rights. Drug users need our care hence the need for treatment and not jails,” Box said.
He said was need for specific strategies to combat the issue before it was too late.
“Zimbabwe doesn’t have a drug master plan to deal with illicit drug use. This is a big time bomb. Drug laws in the country criminalise drug users hence they withdraw from seeking help and then the proliferation continues,” Box said.
“This is a threat to public health and in instances where someone is drunk, he or she is likely to be engaged in risk behaviour such as unprotected sex or other criminal activities. There is no one size fits all on dealing with drug abuse.”
He added: “As an organisation we are calling on the country to reform the drug laws and consider a policy that is based on four pillars which are policing, demand reduction, harm reduction and prevention of drug use.”
