Blantyre Youth Office urges comprehensive drug abuse solutions

Blantyre, November 20, Mana: Research conducted by University of Malawi (UNIMA) and the University of Stirling in Scotland has revealed a high alcohol consumption among youth and women in Africa, attributing the problem to advertisement strategies and branding employed by beverage companies to sell their products.

In an interview with Malawi News Agency (Mana) on Wednesday, Blantyre District Youth Officer, Peter Mizedya concurred with the researchers' call to action, emphasizing the need for new policies regulating alcohol advertising to help reduce alcohol-related deaths in the region, including Malawi.

Mizedya added that many young people also engage in excessive drinking habits due to unmet expectations they had while growing up.

“When these expectations are not met, often due to various hardships such as unemployment, frustration and anger comes in. This makes young people give up easily on life and become more susceptible to being swayed into drug and alcohol abuse,” he added.

Mizedya said Blantyre District Council will continue working with youth clubs to reach out to young people in the area on issues of drug and alcohol abuse.

“In these clubs, we ensure that youths are involved in many activities, including sports, village savings and loans (VSLs), and agricultural initiatives, which are both educative and informative for them,

“These activities aim to keep them engaged while educating them about the dangers of drug abuse, including alcohol consumption. There are young people in youth clubs who are battling with various addictions and others that are involved in prostitution,” he added.

Mizedya emphasized that alcohol consumption was a serious concern as it diminishes productivity of the country’s youths.

“We are losing productive young people who could have contributed significantly to this country and their families. We therefore, urge organizations to incorporate drug abuse initiatives into their youth programmes,” he said.

He also highlighted limited number of trained therapists in youth clubs, noting that counselling provided in youth clubs was inadequate to address issues of drug and alcohol abuse among the youths.

“There is counselling in youth clubs to help young people battling addiction. However, there are no trained psychologists to provide professional therapy, and this is one of the challenges we face,” said Mizedya.

In a separate interview, Psychotherapist and mental health advocate, Catherine Thangalimodzi said there could be a lot of causes of high alcohol consumption and addiction among the youth apart from the marketing strategy that has been established as the main cause.

“Some of the issues we could look into are; unemployment, relationship challenges, the way families deal with problems of their loved ones and unsatisfied emotional needs,

“Youths choose to take alcohol as a way of trying to ease and numb their pain when these emotional needs have not been met,” she said.

Thangalimodzi added that beer consumption has devastating impacts on the lives of the youth as alcohol may instigate health problems, among others.

“We have to understand that there are high risks related to high levels of alcohol consumption such as addiction, increased cases of road accidents due to poor driving, and also liver and kidney problems,” Thangalimodzi added.

The research is titled; Regulating alcohol packaging and supply to protect health in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from policy systems in Malawi and Uganda (RAPSSA).