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{
    "id": 1055186,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1055186/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 447,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Murang’a CWR, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Sabina Chege",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 884,
        "legal_name": "Sabina Wanjiru Chege",
        "slug": "sabina-wanjiru-chege"
    },
    "content": "to help or save our children from drugs abuse. It is under the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government. Drug abusers are people who are sick. They are not criminals. The criminals are the ones who sell the drugs. I hope the office of NACADA will move from the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government to the Ministry of Health, so that they can do the work they are supposed to do. They should build more rehabilitation facilities in this country because they are very minimal. The ones that are there are very expensive. If you have a meeting with the parents of children who abuse drugs or even with some of the children who would like to leave or quit, they will inform you that it is almost unaffordable to go for any rehabilitation. When they do, sometimes, the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) covers up to around Kshs60,000 in the very few facilities that have been approved. So, as a nation, as we look at the way we punish the ones who sell the drugs, we need also to look at how to build rehabilitation centres, make drugs available and even have in place regulations of people who treat drug abusers because some of them make them depend more instead of helping them. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, it is important for this country to know that the Government runs a harm reduction programme in Kenya where we have some Non- Governmental Orgnisations that give a drug called methadone to help drug abusers to quit and some are even given syringes to avoid transmission of diseases. But the same Government that gives these kinds of facilities for harm reduction is the same one that arrests the ones that use the drugs. So, as a country, we need to have a candid talk and see how we can help many of our children who have become drug addicts. It does not make sense when a young man who smokes bhang is arrested and taken to jail because he is not able to afford the penalties and may have been enslaved by his friends. When they get to jail, they are supposed to be corrected, but they get introduced to hard drugs. So, it makes it very difficult."
}