Illicit drugs should be traced to the source was the recommendation given to government officers on the ground by the National Coordinator, National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NACADA) when he paid a courtesy call on the Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner, Peter Raburu at the beginning of a NACADA tour of the Rift Valley.

For example glue sniffed by the street children should be traced to the suppliers. Get hold of the street kids and ask them where they got their supplies from and then follow up. You have to deal with the source Kaguthi exhorted.

The NACADA boss informed the P.C. that the Kipsigis plateau was getting badly made chang'aa which was being sold in the tea estates and even here by merely arresting those who consume "we will continue to waste funds and not effectively deal with the source." Unless we change our approach to the source method we shall not do well he warned.

Turning to bhang (cannabis sativa) the NACADA mandarin revealed that Kurias' on the Kenyan side of the border were contracting their Tanzanian tribesmen on that side of the border to grow bhang which was then smuggled into Kenya for sale.

But the most savage broadside was reserved for a legal drug - tobacco when Kaguthi turned his cannons on the British American Tobacco (BAT) company's participation in the Kenya Music Festival. Taking the message on tobacco the way it is being brought to the music festival, is to take parents to be very naïve. Kids sing that smoking is bad only until you are 18 then it is okay?

He was categorical that unless the music festival stops that category funded by BAT, then NACADA would withdraw its own sponsorship from the festival. The National Coordinator decried the tactics being used by BAT, which he likened to those, used by France, Britain and other western nations to introduce opium to China in the 19th. Century. "BAT should not try to cheat us that cigarettes are just another commodity while the World Health Organisation (WHO) is saying 4.2 million are dying every year," Kaguthi fumed.

The Kenya Music Festival organizers were very naïve to accept this kind of sponsorship as kids were introduced to other substances like bhang through initial smoking of cigarettes. Here is where even the matatu (public mini-bus taxis usually recklessly driven) people were part of the drug culture and enticing youth into it with the kind of stickers they placed in the vehicles e.g. "don't step on grass - smoke it instead." This should not be condoned by police officers at all.

The group including journalists, were shocked to hear that 12% of Kenyans smoked bhang and for the majority it started with initially smoking cigarettes. One in seven got hooked and cigarettes were the known gateway. "So let nobody urge you 'smooth all the way' he cautioned as he urged lawyers to pick up on this and fight for children's and other Kenyans human rights which were being trampled upon by the tobacco companies.

In what could be seem as a conspiracy by all and sundry to seduce Kenyan children to begin smoking even supermarkets were selling sweets shaped as cigarettes thus preparing the child to take up the real thing sooner than later.

Coming in for another salvo were the parents and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO's) whom the National Coordinator castigated, saying they should not wait for NACADA but should take action themselves. "Mothers whose kids were being destroyed by this stuff, should take placards and demonstrate." NACADA had evidence that supported their children’s statements that all manner of drugs were "available, accessible and affordable."

On illicit brews like chang'aa Kaguthi startled the audience when he proposed that the time had come to tell the Kenya Association of Manufacturers to come up with a product like chang'aa but which was legal. This would then be marketed in the normal way "so as to stop people from dying" when they drank the illicitly brewed versions. "The government has failed to eradicate these brews" that is why in Muranga in Central Province women were demonstrating against the police Officers In Charge of Stations, (OCS's) and District Commissioners and other government agents because they had failed to protect them from these brews which were decimating their spouses and children.

P.C. Peter Raburu was in agreement saying that they had been arresting a lot of drums of alcohol some of which were not even chang'aa, but funny mixtures of which exact contents were hard to determine. "The sad thing was that a lot of this pombe (Kiswahili for alcoholic beverage) landed in the hands of students. And where there is pombe there is bhang and crime."

"Njoro Boys very notorious and one boy does not want to go back because at night there is bhang smoking. Mini-packs (small extremely cheap sachets of branded distilled liquor) are also a big problem," the P.C. stated.

P.C. Raburu however conceded that if only the provincial administration would work well "this stuff would not be there. But people were lax, even public health officers not doing their work so chang'aa was even being sold in some bars with government licenses." These bars were also not clean. It was here that young people drank over the weekends and then "there are riots and strikes" compounded by the fact that most schools in the area were day schools.

At the same time some of the products, which were sometimes touted as original liquor, were fake and needed to be checked by the public health officers. "Even Safari Cane sometimes not original but filled with other dubious stuff and re-bottled." He too was of the opinion that arresting consumers was merely like performing first aid on the problem.

In this vein, Kaguthi pointed out that "you cannot tell a drug addict not to take as already caught. Let us separate the crime from profit. Let us go to the source," he reiterated his earlier rallying call.

Kenya had done a lot of work in the '80s' concerning drugs but "most of it was lost in the '90's as government officers are now out on popularity contests as people are dying. Dealers are creating a custodial market and when you find several nappies missing from lines, probably an addict. So when you get these fellows they are not criminals, but just need help."