Zanzibar — ZANZIBAR could be a narcotic drug free state if people in each ward declared war against the drugs, Zanzibar First Vice- President, Seif Sharif Hamad said on Friday in Pemba Islands.
"Each village and ward should work together, be committed and declare war against illicit drugs. Definitely, drugs business will find no room in Zanzibar," Hamad said.The first vice-president gave the advice while officiating at the launch of the 'Mtoni People's Development Association', registered as Jumuiya ya Maendeleo ya Watu wa Mtoni (JUWAMPE) in Chakechake, Pemba.
Hamad said that drugs business and drug abuse is high in Zanzibar, cautioning that the Isles risk a bleak future if war on drugs fails.He added, "If your son, daughter, or brother is not using drugs, do not think you are safe. Zanzibar is facing a real danger with its many youths using drugs," Hamad said.
Mkele, and Kwalinato wards on Unguja Islands were examples that it is possible to control drug abuse. "Drug abuse in these areas is under control as the people themselves decided jointly not to allow drug abuse."Hamad said the government through his office is struggling to find ways of ending the menace and Zanzibaris should join the war.
Comments Post a comment
Here follows an extract from "Notes on Democracy" by Henry Louis Mencken, written in 1926, during alcohol prohibition (1919-1933):
The Prohibitionists, when they foisted their brummagem cure-all upon the country under cover of the war hysteria, gave out that their advocacy of it was based upon a Christian yearning to abate drunkenness, and so abolish crime, poverty and disease. They preached a [crime, poverty and disease free] millennium, and no doubt convinced hundreds of thousands of naive and sentimental persons, not themselves Puritans, nor even democrats.
That millennium, as everyone knows, has failed to come in. Not only are crime, poverty and disease undiminished, but drunkenness itself, if the police statistics are to be believed, has greatly increased. The land rocks with the scandal. Prohibition has made the use of alcohol devilish and even fashionable, and so vastly augmented the number of users. The young of both sexes, mainly innocent of the cup under license, now take to it almost unanimously.
In brief, Prohibition has not only failed to work the benefits that its proponents promised in 1917; it has brought in so many new evils that even the mob has turned against it. But do the Prohibitionists admit the fact frankly, and repudiate their original nonsense? They do not. On the contrary, they keep on demanding more and worse enforcement statutes — that is to say, more and worse devices for harassing and persecuting their opponents.
The more obvious the failure becomes, the more shamelessly they exhibit their genuine motives. In plain words, what moves them is the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and, whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate — which is to say, upon everyone who is free from their barbarous theological superstitions, and is having a better time in the world than they are.
They cannot stop the use of alcohol, nor even appreciably diminish it, but they can badger and annoy everyone who seeks to use it decently, and they can fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences, and they can get satisfaction thereby for the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy. And all this they can do with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.