Drug survey outlines problem, gives hope for solution

THE extent of the drug menace in Zimbabwe has now, for the first time, been measured in a statistical sampling across the 10 provinces with just under one in 30 households having a member who abuses drugs, a minimum of 134 000 people across the country.

The results are bad, perhaps very bad, but not the total catastrophe that some were expecting, and for the first time give an indication of how much effort we all need to make, and it is a lot of effort.

The Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee, ZimVac, of the Food and Nutrition Council and housed at SIRDC north of Harare has a good reputation in its survey work, normally going into non-contentious areas such as household food supplies and incomes, that the results generated with the inclusion of drug and substance abuse will be at least within a ball park estimate.

The drug user survey was done through households, so there is likely to be less lying than would be the case if people were asked directly if they abused drugs, in nine of the 10 provinces the results vary from around 1 in 16 households in Matabeleland North to around one in 42 households, just next door in Matabeleland South. The average is just under one in 30.

The 10th province, Midlands, produced what many would see as an anomalous result, about one in a 143 households. This is so far out of line of the rest of the nine provinces that there must be some freak statistical collections there, a higher percentage of people lying or misinterpretation of the results.

Because of the questions being asked, even with ZimVac’s experience of delving into private lives, the final result of one in 30 households must be considered the minimum, and probably the actual number is somewhat higher, as some people will be ashamed of admitting they have a family member taking drugs and others might have been that family member answering the questions. But the result is still valuable even for that minimum.

Other results produced from the survey, such as that Harare Metropolitan has more like one in 19 households containing at last one drug abuser, and more importantly around a quarter of the total number of drug users in Zimbabwe, fit in with anecdotal evidence that is filtering through.

Harare will also have, although this was not in the survey, more drug dealers since dealers from other provinces come in to see their drug wholesaler.

Easily the largest block of drug abusers will be mbanje smokers, once the alcoholics and near alcoholics abusing alcohol, a legal drug, are excluded.

While mbanje is not the most dangerous drug on the market, there is the fact that most people who smoke it are far more like a seriously heavy drinker or alcoholic than the normal light social drinker. This is the main ground for maintaining the ban.

The next drug down the list appears these days to be crystal meth, which is fairly easy to track down and buy, at least in larger urban areas, according to the authorities.

Then there are the banned cough medications with their addictive contents and then probably cocaine as we move into the hardest drugs.

But the distinction between “hard” and “softer” drugs is somewhat academic when we are dealing with addiction or dealing with people dropping out of life, or becoming ever less useful for productive and rewarding work as their drug habits weaken their hold on reality and make it ever harder for them to work.

No doubt ZimVac will be improving their statistical figures, as will other agencies, but they have at least outlined the severity of the problem with something a lot better than guesswork and it is possible to generate indications of some other drug figures.

For example, we can now make a stab at seeing how bad the drug dealing problem is likely to be.

Even if we assume there is just one dealer for every 50 users, we still get well over 2 500 dealers, so while we are impressed when the police regularly announce that another 25 have been arrested, tried, convicted and jailed, this is just one in a 100 removed from circulation.

And it is probable that dealers are denser on the ground than this rough calculation would suggest.

The Zimbabwean policy is largely treating dealers and users differently. Dealers these days are formally arrested and brought to court, and magistrates will generally impose a jail sentence with another option being exceptionally rare.

Users tend to have the option of a fine, either a police station fine or a court fine.

While this is a good system, we still think it would be useful if those paying police fines were on a database so it would be possible to see repeat offenders and get some idea of when experimentation moved to addiction and the need for treatment.

But we now have some figures, rather than suppositions, and we have a bad problem, and one that needs the kind of effort the Government is throwing at it.

But on the other hand even if ZimVac was out by half, and there were twice as many users, there is still a large majority not involved with drugs.

Although a large minority unfortunately is, and so we can win and can bring around those who would rather drop out into a mindless dream, and at the same time use jail and other deterrents to beat back the dealers and make drugs hard to buy.