In commemoration of this year’s World Day Against Drug, a Non-Governmental Organisation, Centre for Change, has warned Nigerians against stigmatising drug addicts.
The centre advised that the users of hard drugs should rather be treated and addressed as victims and survivors.
President of the Centre, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, who spoke during a ceremony organised by the Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria at a popular hotel on Isaac John Street, Ikeja, with the theme: “Stop the stigmatisation of ex-drug users and victims of human trafficking.”
Okei-Odumakin, who along with members of other NGOs bearing placards with the inscription: “Support. Don’t punish. Be smart. Don’t start,” said drug addicts should be treated with love rather than hatred.
She warned that if the society rejected the survivors, they could lose hope in life and go back to their world of drug addiction.
A psychiatric consultant, Dr. Abel Onyemaechi, told our correspondent that, “Hard drug has caused the death of many young Nigerians. It has made many people to run mad. Many madmen and women you see in tattered clothes on the road are products of drug addiction. It will disturb the brain. It will gradually cause loss of memory. Before you know it, the person will become completely mad. It makes people to be very lazy. After using hard drugs you will see the user sleeping.
“Yes. Indian hemp can stimulate appetite, the kind of appetite that you will eat what ordinarily you cannot eat; which is not also good for your health. And when drug addicts want to eat and they cannot find food, they will steal. There is no doubt about that. We have many kind of hard drugs, like tramadol. Codeine used to be medicine for good health before, but now it is a confirmed hard drug. We have heroin, cocaine, Indian hemp. The rate at which Nigerian youths engage themselves in the consumption of these hard drugs is alarming. Government should do something about it.”
Also on the occasion, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Imohimi Edgal, recalled how the police arrested 56 drug peddlers and charged them to court.
Edgal also recalled the shocking story of how some drug peddlers sold tramadol to primary school pupils close to their school, saying he had to order the arrest of the suspects.
He appealed to parents to monitor their children and know the kind of friends they keep.
The Lagos police boss gave the ratio of drug users among youths as four out of ten.
“Four out of every ten youths in Lagos are using drugs. When I told people about this at one occasion, they were shocked. They wondered where I got my statistics. But it is true. It’s a fact,”
Edgal said.
An ex- drug user, Tosin Olaoluwa, said he had repented and had become an ambassador of the anti- drug campaign.
Olaoluwa confessed that he used to steal his mother’s money to buy drugs, claiming that he used different kind of drugs, even when he was in school.
