Drug addicts part of social disorganisation that must be tackled
CAPE TOWN has been at war for a very long while. The city has been fighting drug abuse for decades. Unfortunately, the war on drugs is being lost rather than being won.
The number of drug abusers, by all accounts, continues to grow. The courts have their hands full. The prisons are overflowing with them. The hospitals are also taking the strain. Politicians, however, keep pushing the same old tired solution that solves nothing and exacerbates everything in that regard.
Gangsters and their pushers are ravaging our society and our townships in particular. Organised crime syndicates and drug dealers are making a killing, literally and figuratively.
It was naive to rely only on the criminalisation of drug possession and drug dealing to solve the escalating problem of drug abuse. Law enforcement, as General Vearey pointed out, has clearly not succeeded. Internal police corruption and the depressing socio-economic conditions prevailing in the worstaffected areas of Cape Town have seen to that.
If all the money, time and energy that has been spent on fighting drug abuse had instead been poured into job creation, township rehabilitation and a thorough make-over of the townships, one township at a time, we would have had more positive outcomes by now. If a place is rundown, it will breed significant criminality and drug abuse. The environment has to be improved.
Drug trafficking and dealing will always have to remain criminal activities. On that score, there can be no let-up. The emphasis, however, should shift from users to pushers. The emphasis in politics must equally shift from waging a war against users to waging a war on the dealers, the bleak environment and rundown nature of many townships. Depressing conditions are conducive for drug abuse. The City can work on a priority list, with the area most beset by drug abuse being at the top. If the worst case is cracked, prospects for reclaiming the whole of Cape Town will succeed more easily.
As for drug addicts, more must be done collectively by society to rehabilitate them and free them from being the prisoners they have become in their own bodies. Drug addicts are part of the social disorganisation taking place in many parts of the city.
Social disorganisation is a recognised condition of the times we live in. William Fielding Ogburn has insightfully identified the tension and strain that emerged among communities as a result of the rapid development in science and technology that left most people confused and bewildered by its speed of takeover.
The rapid and precipitous development in science and technology required reciprocal changes by the family, the churches, the mosques, the synagogues, the temples and all of the legislatures in South Africa.
Religion had to play the role of nursemaid to adjust the people to the changes that were intensifying and of never ever going away. Religious institutions, regrettably, did not do that. Education also failed dismally in this regard. So has the public broadcaster. So has the sporting fraternity, amongst others. Young people who are not on board the “scientific express”, through one of the mentioned agencies, will obviously drift into drug abuse and crime to achieve notoriety and backhanded self-worth.
What we need is a proper assessment of what will work in fighting drug abuse, and how religious and educational institutions can help to reconcile and adjust communities to science and technology. It is an experiment worth undertaking. General Vearey must be congratulated for putting this matter out into the public for an open and honest debate.
Indeed, it is time to find a solution because the situation is completely out of hand, and the danger to all of us just too immense to ignore for even one minute longer. The police certainly do not have the answer, and there is no point in looking at them to find the solutions. Politicians will have to do that.