Matrix Diagnostics

Matrix News

Rwanda begins campaign to attack drug-related crime

Yesterday, Rwanda began a campaign to stem drug-related crime, as increased drug abuse in the country has raised alarms. Religious organisations are also involved in the campaign, which will include increasing community police presence and instituting extra measures to curtail drug abuse.

In a statement announcing the campaign launch, Rosemary Mbabazi, Rwanda’s minister of youth, said that the increase in drug abuse among the country’s youth has become startling. She noted that student’s poor performance in school was due to abusing alcohol and drugs and that the misuse had contributed to many students dropping out of school and turning to crime to fund their substance abuse habit.

Data released by the Rwanda police shows that arrests in 2017 due to drug-related crimes totalled more than 4,000, including about 500 women. Individuals between the ages of 18 and 35 accounted for 71.4% of those arrests.

Emmanuel Gasana, the inspector general of Rwanda’s police, said that Rwanda could become a “failed society” if the increasing trend in drug-related crime is not reversed. He urged introducing strong measures to curtail drug abuse by both students and the general population.

Earlier in January, the country’s Ministry of Education directed that all students who planned to further their education abroad with a government scholarship must take a drug test, and had to be medically certified as drug-free before departing,

This new campaign begins a little over a month after Rwanda instituted a total ban on importing and smoking water-pipe tobacco, known locally as shisha.

Please Get In Touch

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.