City in drive to help addicts kick the drug habit

22 May 2017

 

The City of Johannesburg, in partnership with the South African National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence (SANCA) and family support group Tough Love South Africa, visited Bellavista in Region F on Thursday May 18 to assist young drug addicts kick the habit.

 

Speaking at Amethyst Hall, Linda Pila, a social worker in the Social Benefit Unit of the City’s Department of Health and Social Development, said the campaign did not exclude other age groups.

“The campaign is equally important to ordinary members of society as drug and substance abuse destroys families and ultimately society at large,” Pila said.

“We also have preventative measures that we use to help communities minimise the effects of drugs. Some of the interventions we use are parental programmes that guide parents on how they can prevent drug abuse among their children. This is simply done by monitoring their behavioural patterns. 

“Because we understand that we cannot win this war on our own, we have seen the need to collaborate with other organisations,” Pila said.

The department uses parenting and life skills and sport to prevent and break drug addiction in communities.

Tough Love South Africa Co-ordinator Jo-Anne Wills said parents had a responsibility to help break drug addiction in their families. Wills said parents must let their addicted children suffer their own consequences until they recovered.

“Our mission is to equip parents with how to deal with behavioural issues of their loved ones who are addicted. Most of the time we as parents are the enablers of this behaviour because we prolong their drug addiction.

“We do this by not letting them suffer their own consequences. We take away the consequences of their behaviour and the addiction. When that happens, our children become spoilt and keep on using,” she said.

Bellavista residents complained of continued drug peddling in the area. They said this did not help recovering addicts, who were always tempted to go back to their bad old ways.

Resident Louisa Human said the lack of social workers was another contributing factor. “We cannot constantly blame parents for every ill-behaviour in society. There has to be collaboration between law enforcement agencies and us the community.

“But, first and foremost, we need to ensure that our children are protected from drug dealers because they are the ones exposing our children to this kind of behaviour,” Human said.