Pretoria - The criminal justice system has failed in its role of leading the fight against nyaope, and has been applying double standards by also peddling the deadly drug on city streets.
They have to choose a side and clean up their act to wipe drugs out of city communities, says health and community wellness expert, Jannie Hugo, an associate professor in the department of family medicine at the University of Pretoria.
Hugo said criminalising the drug had failed dismally mainly because police officers were involved in peddling it.
“It has clearly failed, and we need to find other ways to deal with the widespread availability and use of nyaope,” he said.
The criminal justice system was in the field playing for the eradication of nyaope, but some officers also played in the team against this, he said.
But the police said Hugo was making very serious allegations which management would investigate.
Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said: “Anyone who has visuals or any information that may lead to the exposure of the corrupt police officers should please come forward.”
Hugo is a family physician and responsible for UP’s community engagement in the faculty of health sciences.
He leads a team of health practitioners and other stake-holders working on improving primary health care in the community.
On the team are the university, the Department of Health, the City of Tshwane, NGOs, law-enforcement agents, social workers, churches and others.
Hugo said the effects of nyaope were of serious concern to the health sector, and the failure to effectively provide care, treatment and rehabilitation threatened to derail efforts to save the nation of young addicts.
“The dependency on the drug interlinks with diseases including HIV, tuberculosis, serious injuries, pregnancy and prostitution,” he said.
The scourge in Pretoria was bad: “It is very bad, bad in the sense that it is available on a wide scale, and bad because once they have used nyaope, users then move on to intravenous drugs, sharing needles and spreading infections,” Hugo said.
His team is among stakeholders working on strategies to fight the outbreak of nyaope in the city, others being government departments, the police and other law-enforcement agencies.
Nyaope, in its various forms, is the newest drug on the market. It has caused an addiction scare across the country.
It came on to the streets five years ago, the home-grown cocktail being known to include anti-retroviral tablets, rat poison, heroin, pool cleaner, milk powder and dagga.
It is highly addictive and users are known to get hooked from the first puff.
Users smoke it by heating the ingredients and inhaling the fumes. The initial feelings include euphoria and a sensation of relaxation.
When the effects wear off, addicts normally get desperate for another hit, a factor which has been blamed for criminal incidents on the streets and in homes, when they steal and grab handbags and cellphones to sell and feed their habit.
Nyaope first appeared on the streets of Mamelodi, Soshanguve and Atteridgeville before spreading into the city centre, creating the need for intervention methods similar to that Hugo and his team provide.
Addicts can be found mainly in townships and on the streets of the inner city, where the homeless openly admitted to their addiction and use of it to stave off the effects of the elements.
That particular section of user was among the major areas of concern for Hugo and his team.
“These people are a very important public health issue, because they are the prime example of the ills of society,” he said.
Epidemics were rife among the street homeless, and to care for them was a public imperative, one that was not so easy if they were often thrown into cells without whatever treatment they were taking.
“Nyaope is a particular problem within a bigger problem, drug addiction in society being a symptom of the pains of society.”
Drugs were all the more lethal because they linked psycho-social problems with diseases, crime and addicts were becoming the currency through which they were all interlinked.
But the police, said Hugo, had shown themselves up as being part of the problem, often being part of the criminal aspect of the nyaope problem and causing confusion on their real role in fighting its widespread use.
“It is a serious disgrace and concern to policemen, and they need to either stop these illegal activities or pull out,” Hugo said.
“You just don’t know when they are playing with you or against you, and as a health practitioner and academic, I say their role in criminalising nyaope use and also being involved in its availability is wasting our time.”
There were a lot of dedicated people from the private and public sectors working hard to wipe nyaope out, and difficult as their strategies would be to implement, they were better off working on a level field, he said.
Hugo called for the decriminalising of nyaope, saying this would remove the police from dealing with it and bar them from interrupting the process of providing treatment and care.
This would also remove the confusion caused when a user or dealer was arrested, which often gave rise to questions on whether they were being punished by the police for failing to follow orders, or if it was a genuine case, he said.
Pretoria News