Anthony Hall paints a picture in which parents and teens are complicit. Photo: Facebook

Anti-drug crusader Anthony Hall  thinks that parents are as much to blame for their children taking drugs, as are the children. Hall, the co-founder of R.A.E.L. (Recovering Addicts Empowering Lives), points a finger at “parents who do not exert enough control and who do not give enough love,” and describes the offspring they rear in the process.

“Going to clubs at too young an age…They are not street-wise enough. Lack of love often leads to using. Alcohol is seen as okay and dagga is accepted as a natural weed, yet it causes high cases of psychosis. The teenagers experiment at parties, in their circle of friends. Tik use adds to one’s sex drive and girls think they are going to lose weight.”

He sums up the troubled teens as: “Children with too much money and bored – left alone at malls. Lots of teens all around the country are given money and left to their own devices.”

Parents & children do drugs together
Hall says there is a trend of parents doing drugs with their children. The oldest of these parents whom he encountered was in his late fifties, lived on a farm and used tik with his children.

Hall points out that the rural schools are experiencing an influx of drugs. He describes it as a pandemic and says that the schools in the north of the country are worse off than those in the Western Cape. “They can’t compare.”