Port Elizabeth high-school girls were organising ”cocaine parties” via their cellphones, the Herald Online reported on Saturday.
At least 20 girls, mainly from high schools in the city, were organising cocaine parties through the cellphone chat service MXit, said Gerrie Cronje, chief executive of a privately run rehabilitation centre called Sheperd’s.
A child being treated at the facility said the parties were apparently hosted at different venues, pre-arranged through MXit, with cocaine readily available.
Cronje told the Herald he was not aware of a single school in Port Elizabeth where drugs had not ”reared their head”.
Police also expressed concern about the high prevalence of cocaine use and addiction among schoolchildren.
”The problem is that the children do not know what they are buying. Cocaine is often cut [bulked up] with a variety of chemicals, ranging from foot powder and bicarbonate of soda to pool chlorine and Rattex,” said spokesperson Captain Verna Brink.
She said dealers are known to lace cocaine with traces of heroin, ensuring a higher addiction rate in first-time users.
Provincial safety and security minister Thobile Mhlahlo said crime-pattern analysis shows that an average of 271 young people, aged below 18, are arrested in the Eastern Cape each month.
Most of those arrested are boys aged between 15 and 17, and many of the arrests are for drug possession. — Sapa