Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 439867,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/439867/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 252,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "It is obvious that alcoholism and drug abuse in our country is at crisis level. I would have hoped to see hon. Ichung’wah even proposing more amendments, so as to encompass other hard drugs. We know cannabis sativa or bhang is also widely abused. However, I am happy with these amendments because he proposes rehabilitation centers. He also proposes education to the public on the benefits of using affordable alternatives to dangerous liquor. This has an important import in that for those who cannot stay without a drink, they are being given an alternative and particularly so because the other problem we have is the dominance of the market by the big players. We know, for instance, the Kenya Breweries has completely dominated the beer industry leaving out other traditional brewers like the muratina and busaa that have been referred to and even chang’aa . In fact, I do not see the reason why chang’aa should not be legalized and encouraged. The other thing I want to say is that alcoholism has completely decimated some of our populations in different parts of this country. There are areas or counties that births have come to a halt. It is worse than a contraceptive and it is not intended. We have obviously seen demonstrations from our womenfolk saying that the men folk have failed to carry out their conjugal responsibilities because of excessive drinking. You can see every day on our roads young people sleeping around and not doing anything because of the high level of addiction that some of these drinks bring to them. Most of our youths have lost their jobs and the immorality level has also gone up. So it is a menace that is touching on the fabric of our society. This is the high time to rein in, particularly on those who brew dangerous poisons and sell them to our youths and our general population as drinks. Most importantly, there is no pride in failing in conjugal responsibilities because of drinks. There is no pride in getting one child or two children. You know we talk about family planning and think that it is very important to have just one child or two children when you can even afford to bring up six, seven and even ten. This is the time to encourage our population to procreate more. We procreate and bring up important members of our society. Even then, this Bill is important because it will edge out pretenders who set up rehabilitation centers or people who run rehabilitation centres with an aim of exploiting our people. At this point in time, this Bill is bringing in law in certain institutions so that they will go out of their way to make sure that we have rehabilitation centers that are well equipped and are run by professionals. I am aware of certain NGOs which set up rooms pretending that they are rehabilitating drug abusers yet they are exploiting them. They even use them as sex slaves. Others even use them as conduits for human trafficking. So, these amendments may appear to be minor, but they are going to touch on the very wide fabric of our society."
}