SA's addiction to addiction

By Warren Whitfield

According to the latest United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime stats:

Drug use in South Africa is double the world norm.

South Africans consume more alcohol every year than anyone else in the world.

About 15% of South Africans are “problem drug users”.

The Northern Cape has highest incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome in the world, affecting 111 children out of every 1 000.

The point has been made that South Africa is the “addiction capital of the world” and that we are experiencing a drug crisis. As true as this is, the most frightening crisis we actually face is this: you may or may not be aware that addiction prevention and treatment in South Africa receives no funding from corporate social responsibility programmes and philanthropies.

Addiction as a national issue is today where HIV/Aids was 20 years ago, misunderstood, under-financed and threatening to destroy our country. But 20 years ago there were 400 people in SA living with HIV, according to the latest stats more than 6.75 million South Africans are “problem drug users”. A far more desperate place to be considering the lack of awareness and funding available.

The biggest challenge we face is that addiction isn’t very popular. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes and philanthropic foundations haven’t identified addiction as a problem that needs funding. And the government perceives addiction merely as related to substances. The Prevention of and Treatment for Substance Abuse Bill is limited in scope, it does not treat behaviours such as gambling, sex, pornography, over-spending and the internet as addictions. Another common misperception is that addiction relates only to illegal drugs so public awareness needs to be raised.

Given that they are not identified as addictions, no provision is made for them in the Bill and therefore no provision is made for tax spending on harm reduction. Oh boy, I brought up taxes. Well, this is a touchy subject because South Africa is addicted to income derived from addictive products and services. What I mean is that we depend on the taxes collected from tobacco, alcohol and gambling. Actually most South African’s only think of the “sin” taxes generated but there’s also VAT and company tax on every beer that’s consumed, every cigarette that’s smoked and every rand that’s gambled.

“You’re mad! They’ll never give up the taxes,” someone told me. Perhaps so, but shouldn’t we try to at least be less dependent on income derived from suffering? We’ve overcome oppression and apartheid only to find ourselves enslaved to addiction and the money we make from it. Something’s gotta give or should I say, someone needs to.

Addiction is also one of the main causes of the spread of HIV. It is not commonly known that HIV-positive people who take anti-retrovirals and abuse substances do not metabolise anti-retrovirals correctly. Alcohol is increasingly recognised as a major inhibiting factor in HIV prevention. So how does one drive a public-awareness campaign without funding from CSRs and philanthropies — even the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the world, does not fund addiction prevention?

The addiction epidemic needs to be seen as a human-rights violation. Why, because 95% of all South Africans have no access to addiction treatment because English is not their first language or treatment is simply unaffordable. The terrifying truth is that even if we could afford to send someone from a disadvantaged community to rehab at a cost of about R45 000, they simply would not cope with the culture of the programme or the language. The consequence for most addicts is jail, institution and death.

If a man were lying in the street helpless to defend himself and someone came along and took his wallet it would be considered theft wouldn’t it? Yet we allowed casinos to make more than R5.5 billion last year from 5% of their gamblers. This 5% is the problem gamblers ie the ones who are helpless because they cannot control themselves. And how much did they give back? Less than R35 million to harm reduction initiatives that helped mainly English-speaking people. By the way, the other 95% brought in about R10.6 billion, which means problem gamblers contribute more than 30% of the total revenue for the industry.

Knock, knock!: “Who’s there?”

Answer: “The Addiction Action Campaign.”

Response: ”Sorry, we have no budget but you guys are doing a great job! Keep it up!”

And don’t assume we earn nice salaries either because so far it’s all been for love. The Addiction Action Campaign has real solutions for South Africa but they require REAL funding. As it stands right now, we, just like the one or two other NGOs dealing with this issue, face closure. We have just about enough money in the bank to pay our debit orders this month.

But don’t worry, see, we’ll “keep it up!”. Oh, and one final thought I have to offer, we have been trying to alert the media with these statistics for over a year now, long before the super dooper United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime confirmed our measurements.

Warren Whitfield is the chairperson of The Addiction Action Campaign.