Drugs are a disease that will kill a country

We take for granted the pain of a drug addiction. Surely, we can just lock our doors and close the problem out when the afflicted are not our kin.

The drug trade is an old one, from opium to nyaope, drugs are an old curse to the human race… we have evolved as a society throughout the years, yet this one thing remains a bad mark on society. For years, we made the assumption that drugs were a high-society problem.

I mean, if you cannot afford brown bread, how can you afford your next fix?

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Then drug lords made the drug cheaper and cheaper and, slowly, young addicts turned their family homes into “retail stores”, shopping from home, stealing a microwave oven that costs R999 for R150.

All the while mothers worked for years to upgrade from the two-plate stove to the microwave oven that will now pay for the day’s fix. Then there’s the aspect of drugs really making their users look terrifying, literally making you want to run a mile when you see them.

Altar boys, debaters and choir singers who had such great potential reduced to the annoying guy who’s always asking for “just R10”.

I remember how nyaope boys used to steal taps from homes in Soweto… gone are the days when cleaning and shining your tap attracted just admiration from neighbours. But can we remedy the situation when hospital staff are fuelling the problem by stealing from the state to provide to dealers and users?

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As a society, there are too many cracks where too many people are falling into and it’s possible that soon we’ll forget their plight. The petty thief who steals to fuel a drug habit will soon escalate to be the violent highjacker who speeds off with a baby dragged behind a moving car from their car seat.

Drugs have the potential to kill whatever potential this country has. As a country, a society, we need to ring the alarm on a disease that will kill a country, one addict at a time and not only on Mandela Day.

So how do we celebrate the stellar work done by shows like Moja Love’s Sizok’thola, but still be expected to shame their methods of operation?

ALSO READ: Tanzanian woman bust with over R200k worth of drugs in KZN

Yes, an eye for an eye leaves us all blind… but the actions of drug dealers honestly leave us to walk a tightrope in morality. As things stand, this nation applauds the absence of drug dealers, the rest is still unwritten.