Persuasion, boots will not liberate youth from booze

The law is not helping Kenya fight alcoholism among the youth. Such is President Uhuru Kenyatta’s frustration that he has called in the paramilitary General Service Unit and MPs.

For four days, starting yesterday, a mix of commando tactics and political persuasion was being used in the former Central Province to achieve a cold-turkey shutdown of drinking dens enticing youth away from a life of opportunity and promise.

Five years after the repeal of the Chang’aa Prohibition Act, 1980, and its replacement with the sterner Alcoholic Drinks Control Act, 2010, the country is in the grip of the devil’s drink.

Locating bars and other drinking premises 300 metres away from nursery, primary and secondary schools — as by law required — was not sufficient to discourage youth. The President’s own MP says the number of bars in Gatundu South constituency is double that of schools, triple the number of butcheries.

Youth still wet behind the ears are being seduced away from school by the aroma of alcohol, becoming sozzled zombies with a proclivity for sexual crimes against sheep, cows and other domestic animals.

The kind of disorganised crime thriving now invites Kenya to borrow strong-arm tactics from the United States prohibition era. Between 1918 and 1933, during the life of the Thirteenth Amendment of the American Constitution, a total ban on the importation, manufacture and sale of alcohol spawned a period of national holiness and abstinence presided over by high priests like Al Capone.

Obviously, some people do not take the President seriously — even when thousands of university students across the continent vote him as the best president in Africa. Around this time in 2013, he ordered all illicit brews wiped out in the former Central Province.

Last year, to demonstrate his seriousness, the President tapped Mr John Mututho, the man who wrote the Alcoholic Drinks Control law, to implement it as chairman of Nacada.

Still, devious people have tortured the law in every imaginable way to supply alcohol to youth without attracting the Sh150,000 fine or a year in jail sentence for selling to under 18s.

Where illegal manufacture of alcohol attracts Sh2 million or five years in jail, they have bent every rule in the book to remain barely legal. No one has ever paid the Sh10 million fine or is serving the 10 years in the can for adulterating alcohol, but Nacada says people are drinking low-priced spirits that “have a high alcohol content because they are the most available, affordable and accessible in the region”. Chang’aa and traditional liquor are in short supply.

Mr Mututho, who engineered the banning of alcohol in sachets and decreed that it be sold only in glass bottles no smaller in volume than 250 millilitres, is mocked by people staggering with their bootleg stashed in coat pockets. The Sh50,000 fine or six months in jail for the manufacturers and sellers is an empty threat.

The law restricted the sale of alcohol to six hours on weekday evenings, and nine hours on weekends and public holidays. Still, Nacada last year found that in the former Central Province, 60 per cent of alcohol was consumed before midday.

Although there is an administrative architecture of district alcoholic drinks regulation committees — with a district officer, a medical officer of health, the police boss, the representatives of the county government and two women and a man representing local residents as well as a Nacada official — they cannot interfere with people who are carrying out legitimate business activities.

The GSU’s Recce Squad should bring its commando training to kick down doors, break grills and pour out the poison to save youth and collect taxes.

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