The Executive Director of the Philips Foundation, Mr. Boateng Mensah has backed the calls for minor drug offenders such as addicts to be rehabilitated rather than sent to prison. He noted that addicts were people who needed help and should be treated as such instead of the resort to round them up for prison which in the end leaves them rather hardened up instead of reforming them.
Speaking to Rite news, Mr. Boateng wondered why a person caught with a ‘stick’ of marijuana should be treated in the same manner as one who cultivated hectares of the Indian hemp.
He said issues like these and similar others were what inform Philips Foundation projects to train leaders to inculcate the habit of refraining from the destructive use of drugs in their communities. The Foundation in collaboration with the Narcotics Control Board is concentrating on two districts each in three region identified as priority areas to try and deal with the harmful effects of drug use in those districts.
Yilo Krobo municipal and Fanteakwa district in the Eastern region, Ga west and Shai Osudoku districts in the Greater Accra region as well as Cape Coast municipal and Agona West district in the Central region are the three priority regions being covered in the project.
The project also targets stakeholders to fight the effects of drug usage such as theft, violence and road accidents caused by drivers who smoked marijuana which are devastative.
According to him, the project was meant to educate and train the youth as well as community leaders towards the fight against drugs and also ensure a clean district, one that is free and also clean from drug trafficking in order to improve health to foster developmental resources.
He was worried that companies found it rather prudent sponsoring events which in some instances feature drug addicts and users while those same companies shied away from putting resources into the drug war.
The way forward, he says, is to commit resources to fight the canker of drugs as well as the enforcement of the law and that so long as there was demand, there would surely be supply.
Source: ritefmonline.org
