Pubdate: Mon, 04 Feb 2008
Source: Star, The (South Africa)
Copyright: Independent Newspapers 2008
Contact:  http://www.thestar.co.za/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/423
Author: Angelique Serrao

DRUG USE RAMPANT AMONG OUR SCHOOLCHILDREN

Six years ago, the average age of a first-time drug user was 19. Today
it's 10. It has become so bad that experts say every school in the
country now has a drug problem and that it's out of control.

A member of the drug training and awareness centre at the SA Police
Service's Organised Crime Unit, Jan Combrink, who has visited schools
to teach children about the dangers of drug abuse, has found children
as young as 4 using drugs.

Drug abuse among the youth has become so bad that chief prosecutors
with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the SAPS, drug
rehabilitation centres, churches, shelters and schools have come
together to form an organisation, Westsiders Against Addiction, which
combines all the key players in the fight against drug abuse among
children.

"Before, we found that children were starting on drugs like glue and
dagga," said Westsiders chairperson George Pappas. "Now kids are
starting on Mandrax and heroin.

"Our children are dying at an alarming rate. The recovery rate with a
heroin addict is 1 to 2 percent, which means the majority of those
users will die."

Combrink has been working with Westsiders for three
years.

He says there isn't a school he has visited which doesn't have drug
users. He said most children can name all the drugs available on the
market before he starts his presentations.

"Every school has someone with drug problems," he said. "Sometimes it
is easier for a child to get drugs in a school than bumming a cigarette.

"If the school is denying they have a problem, those are the schools
to avoid as a parent. Those are the cold, hard facts."

Johan Venter, a chief prosecutor with the NPA, said he couldn't sit
around anymore and do nothing about the increasing number of children
he sees in court because of drug abuse.

"There was one case where a boy of 7 was in court for house robbery
and murder. He started using drugs at 4 years old.

"His parents were using him for crime, and the drugs gave him courage
to do what he had to do," Venter said.

"We need to equip our children with the knowledge that if they go down
this path, it will lead to destruction. These children are being
prosecuted because they are sick and they are being used by adults."

Venter began looking into helping drug addicts when he started an
organisation with Combrink called Operation 360. The organisation was
started to help child prostitutes, but the more they delved into
prostitution, the more they realised that children were going down
that road because they were drug addicts.

"If you visit a fancy hotel, you can't believe how many child
prostitutes there are in that street," Venter said.

A fellow chief prosecutor, Matric Luphondo, said that despite the
existence of specialised drug courts, so many children were coming
into court with drug problems, he realised that no single organisation
could deal with this problem on its own.

"As a prosecutor, I realised we have to become more outcomes based,"
said Luphondo. "Putting a child through the courts doesn't solve
anything. He will just come out again and carry on. We need to prevent
that docket from ever coming into court."

One of the ways Westsiders decided to combat crime was to do training
in Gauteng schools. With a grant of R900 000 from the Westbank Fund,
the organisation is going into more than 160 schools in Gauteng.

The first school to experiment on the programme was Allen Glen High
School on the West Rand, which has formed and trained leaders as drug
monitors to look out for signs of drug use among their peers. Last
year the school identified 11 pupils who had drug problems. They have
now been put through the rehabilitation programme.

Combrink said another positive point to the programme was that
children were alerting the SAPS to the dealers in their area, and they
were able to make convictions.

Whenever he goes to a school, children come forward and give him the
names of dealers, he added. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake