Schools have closed for the festive season and most teenagers will be flooding our shopping malls, playing fields and
empty spaces around our neighborhoods which all too often are the hunting grounds of drug-pushers, child-molesters and paedophiles.
With the introduction of the new drug ‘flakka’ the police believe many young children could be in serious danger as drug dealers create a market to feed the frantic festive fantasies of the youth. They regard the role of the drug-peddlers to be that of foot soldiers whose job it is to establish the ground work for the pushers so they can lure new consumers – especially unsuspecting innocent teenagers – and saturate targeted areas with the drug,
Flakka comes in a variety of colours, shapes, sizes and looks no different to a normal kiddies’ sweet sold at shops in a mall or spaza outlets around the townships. This makes the drug even more appealing to unsuspecting teenagers who might take it as just another ordinary “sweet” to eat and enjoy.
The police have also appealed to parents to educate their children about the dangers of accepting “gifts” and “goodies” from strangers in public spaces. And in interviews with a number of teenagers who have been lucky enough to be rescued from the clutches of drug addiction, many claimed their very first experience with drugs became a gateway to habitual abuse of other forms of drugs.
For those who have watched videos or seen photographs of flakka victims on social media, the truth about the reality of flakka in local neighbourhoods is a scary fact.
The police believe the “war on flakka” is going to be an even more fierce battle to fight in order to save the youth.
Communities on the other hand are looking to the police to be visible with anti-crime patrols at malls, recreational parks and other public facilities. Some parents have even encouraged stop-and-search patrol routines to root out drug peddlers and to push them out from all public spaces, including community public parks.
The police are also urging parents, teachers, church leaders, communities and civic bodies to rally together and keep children out of the reach of these predatory drug peddlers and pushers in our communities. Although the full impact of flakka has not yet manifested itself in its targeted audience, the youth, the police fear that by the time it finally does, its firm hold on its young victims would be just too ghastly for most parents to contemplate.
In most instances it is difficult to monitor the flow of the drug into the hands of the young and unsuspecting
youth until it is too late. “Parents will have to be vigilant at all times and monitor their children’s change in behaviour,” commented Capt Ndobe
of the Katlehong SAPS, one of Kathorus townships sagging under the weight of drug abuse by the local youth.
But as Capt Ndobe warned that parents must not think the problem of drugs with their children is the matter of the police and teachers. And unless we all join hands and fight this drug
scourge together, we will undoubtedly reap their destructive rot together.
+++++++++++++
Thieves in sheep skins
I can only wish the Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane well in her findings of grand scale theft
and mismanagement of funds intended for the burial of former State President Nelson Mandela four years ago.
Not in even the most dysfunctional families would one find such grand scale diabolical behaviour by
those entrusted with conducting the burial of a senior member of the family.
I personally find the despicable actions of those who turned the loss of the nation in the death of
Mandela as an opportunity for them to embezzle over R300-million under the disguise of being kind-hearted mourners assigned with the nation’s grief.
May the laws of them land punish them severely for their evil greed!
