Nairobi — The National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) has discovered that alcohol is the most abused drug in Kenya.
According to the report, alcohol was found to be the most abused drug with 3,199,119 of the population affected, followed by Tobacco and Khat at 2,305,929 and 964,737 affected people respectively.
"The situation has been made worse due to the growing problem of drug abuse in our schools. The most abused drug in Kenya is alcohol followed by tobacco, khat, cannabis, prescription drugs, heroin and cocaine," NACADA stated in its quarterly report.
The report also indicated that persons between age 25-35 years are the most people who consume alcohol followed by persons of age 15-24yrs.
Additionally, the men are leading in alcohol consumption than women.
"Prevalence of current use of manufactured alcohol states that 12.6 percent of male use alcohol while female stands at 2.4 percent," the report indicated.
Chairman NACADA Stephen Mairori who was speaking to Citizen on Monday 13th, said Western Kenya is leading in illicit brewing alias 'Chang'aa' followed by Nyanza then Rift Valley.
He said that the poison levels in brewed illicit in Western is low compared to Central Kenya which leads in use of portable spirits which the poison level is high and harmful for consumption.
"The whole report will be released soon but the leading now is Western, but the difference between Western and Central is that the poison levels in central is higher," he said.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
The report also states that the men still lead in consuming the traditional liquor especially in the rural areas compared to women.
"5.0 percent of the male gender in the population lead in use of traditional liquor while female gender stands at 1.4 percent," the report indicated.
Mairori also said authorities are considering measures to increase penalties for sellers of illegal beer.
He added that the current fines for those who sell illegal alcohol are not enough to curb the vice.
"I think we need to have more punitive penalties and this is something we're looking at because when people feel they can go pay a small fine and go away that doesn't help. We'll look at that entire thing," he said.
The chairman lauded police officers who have been active in combating the illicit brew trade saying their efforts have been instrumental.
He cautioned any officers who are in cahoots with those selling illicit liquor to stop such alliances.
"We want to tell all our officers, we all have children and this is a country we love, we want to have a country of healthy people, we want a working nation, please let's all help, this is a war that we must win," he said
