General News of Thursday, 27 November 2014
Source: Starrfmonline.com
The Vice President of Alcohol and Drugs Free Missions – a nongovernmental organization – Christopher Abu Abanah has appealed to government to consider providing more rehab centers for drug addicts rather than throwing them into prisons.
According to him, the conditions in most of the country’s prisons facilitate the continuous use of the abusive substances.
“…It’s like someone who is alive and you push them in a coffin and nailing the coffin, and they have to struggle to get out”.
“The government has to come in and help us to be setting up more rehab centres, and policy makers have to revisit the law of arresting drug addicts and jailing them. Jailing them doesn’t solve the problem,” the reformed drug addict told Morning Starr host Kafui Dey Thursday.
He dismissed the notion that jailing drug addicts helps to transform them.
“I have been to prison before and even in the prison yard, I realised that they sell marijuana and other drugs there,” he stated.
The issue of drug use has become topical in Ghana following the arrest of popular hiplife artiste Kwaw Kese for allegedly smoking weed in public, as well as the recent arrest of a Ghanaian lady, Nayele Ametefeh in the UK for drug trafficking.