African Union: To fight drug abuse, focus on treatment

By Shu’eib Hassen

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AA) – Antidrug strategies on the African continent should focus more on reducing demand, while also integrating with efforts to restrict supply, said an African Union official Wednesday.e are shifting now towards drug demand reduction, which focuses on the treatment of drug users,” African Union (AU) Director of Social Affairs Olawale Maiyegun told Anadolu Agency at a five-day AU gathering on drug abuse in Cape Town. “With the exception of South Africa, the continent has inadequate treatment facilities.”

Representatives from 42 African countries reported on progress and strategies against drug abuse at the gathering in Cape Town.

According to a 2015 African Union report, to date most African countries have instead focused their resources primarily on reducing the drug supply, meaning the policing of narcotics.

Maiyegun said, “These policies have led to serious unintended consequences and often disproportionately impact the poor and marginalized, while creating a rich and powerful criminal market that undermines the security of states.”

He told AU representatives that policing and treatment strategies need to integrate their efforts in order to effectively eradicate narcotics on the continent.

“We need policing. We cannot ignore that there are drugs produced on our land. African governments need policy frameworks to recognize drug users as victims of these criminals that need treatment,” he said.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2015 World Drug Report found that 1 in 18 people in Africa suffer from drug-user disorders, more than triple the number in Western and Central Europe.

Nadine Burnhams, senior scientist at South Africa’s Medical Research Council, found that African states are not on par with UN standards for data capturing on drug treatment and policing.

In an effort to remedy this, the African Union’s Drug Epidemiology Project was launched this year through the end of 2017.

“The Drug Epidemiology Project will set proper strategies and methods for gathering and retrieving the necessary data to update policy frameworks of African countries,” AU Drug Control representative Jane-Marie Ongolo told Anadolu Agency.

The AU meeting resolved that to significantly address Africa’s drug crisis, epidemiology networks need to be created at national levels in each African country and then report to a central hub within the AU.