Garson
PRESSURE is growing to shift the drug advisory board out of the Department of Welfare in an attempt to push its illicit drugs portfolio higher up the national agenda.
The Mail & Guardian understands that board officials support a move, possibly to the Office of the Deputy President. The Welfare Department said this week it would also recommend a “new location” for the board.
The board is currently drawing up a drugs master plan which aims to make the issue of drug dealing and abuse a national priority, and to coordinate the efforts of all relevant departments in fighting back.
Many in the field believe the Welfare Department is too weak to achieve such goals. “One of the biggest problems hampering the country’s efforts to do something about the problem is the lack of political will,” says Charles Parry, a scientist in the Medical Research Council’s mental health and substance abuse division.
“It is crazy that we don’t have an integrated drug control strategy … It is unacceptable for drugs policy to sit under the Department of Welfare. It is not one of the strongest departments and won’t foster collaboration. It is also not at the top of the welfare minister’s agenda.”
The Welfare Department ‘s director of community integration, Dr Eddie Harvey, concedes that the “board has its limitations under the department and we will be recommending a new location”.
Questions also hang over the police’s failure to combat drug dealing. The National Crime Prevention Strategy does not mention drugs at all, while the head of the organised crime division, which deals with drug trafficking, Commissioner Neels Venter, has recently retired.
Superintendent Ebrahim Kadwa of the South African Narcotics Bureau (Sanab) says the drugs game is largely new for the police who spent years concentrating their energies on maintaining apartheid.
“We’ve largely ignored the problem in the past but we now have a new manpower commitment to it. We’re on a learning curve. We’ve undergone structural changes and we have new priorities,” he says.
He adds that the absence of drugs in the National Crime Prevention Strategy was “a bit of an omission” but this does not reflect what is happening on the ground. Sanab has been restructured and separate elite squads have been set up in every major city to deal with trafficking issues.
“Communities must also realise that we are only one component of the machinery to combat drug trafficking and abuse.”