DA leader, Mmusi Maimane, highlighted the destructive effects of drug addiction in his Youth Day message of Friday.
He was addressing a group of people who marched to the Phoenix Police Station in Durban.
“The biggest wrong that we can do in society is to allow the spirit of youth to be stolen from our young people,” Maimane said.
The DA leader said it was “precisely what we do when we allow our children to fall under the spell of drugs and the evil people who distribute them”.
“Nothing destroys the life of a child like the effects of drug addiction. Nothing steals their youth faster than growing up in a culture of drug abuse, violence and gangsterism,” he said.
Maimane said that people in Phoenix know all about the dangers of drugs and gangs. “You see and you feel these dangers every single day,” he added.
“The fight against the people who sell drugs in our communities, and who use children to sell them to other children, is a battle that can only be won if we all stand together and fight it on all fronts,” Maimane said.
He said criminals who sell drugs to children should be arrested and prosecuted.
“We must offer those who got themselves caught up in drug abuse a way out through rehabilitation and reintegration into society,” he said.
