Peer pressure, broken homes, poverty and a booming underground market are fueling a crisis that threatens Kenya’s future.
Drug and substance abuse in Kenyan schools has shifted from whispers in dormitories to headlines in newspapers. It is a fire spreading through classrooms and playgrounds, consuming not just the promise of young learners but also the country’s future. We have watched in silence as children as young as twelve trade textbooks for cigarettes, bhang, cheap liquor, and pills. The question is no longer whether there is a problem; it is how deep the rot runs, and why.
Teenage life thrives on belonging. In school corridors, in crowded dormitories, at the back of buses during school trips, the cry to fit in is louder than the teacher’s call to study. A learner fears isolation more than failure, and when a friend offers a puff, a sip, or a pill, resistance crumbles. Peer pressure is not a theory; it is a daily ritual in many schools. A brilliant child who topped the class yesterday is often undone by the tyranny of the crowd today.
Yet the school is only a mirror of the home. In households where alcohol flows freely, where parents stagger in drunk before dawn or laugh about ‘just one bottle,’ children learn that intoxication is a normal part of life. Add absentee parenting; guardians who provide school fees but no guidance; and you have learners who step onto the school compound already vulnerable, already searching for comfort or escape in the wrong places.
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The suppliers are never far away. Just beyond the school gates, in dusty kiosks and dimly lit backstreets, peddlers of cheap liquor and bhang wait like fishermen with easy bait. They know the market well: a student with pocket money and curiosity is their perfect customer. Worse, the trade has infiltrated schools themselves. Rogue watchmen, crooked workers, and even fellow students have become the drug conduits within learning institutions. Easy availability is not just temptation; it is an open invitation.
But the pull of drugs is not always about thrill. It is also about the crushing weight of academic stress. In an education system obsessed with grades, assignments and national exams, many learners live under silent desperation. To some, a pill or a puff is not rebellion but relief, a misguided attempt to calm nerves, concentrate longer, or escape expectations. What begins as a coping mechanism ends as a chain of addiction.
Culture does not help. On TikTok, YouTube, and local music videos, intoxication is the new badge of ‘soft life.’ Celebrities flaunt bottles, smoke clouds and endless parties as symbols of success. Students, scrolling through these curated lies, confuse recklessness for freedom and indulgence for adulthood. With weak moral filters, the glamorization of drugs becomes gospel truth to young minds.
Discipline in many schools has also softened. Rules are written but rarely enforced, punishments meted inconsistently and vices left unchecked. In such lax environments, drug use finds fertile ground. Once smuggling becomes routine and indiscipline tolerated, vice is no longer an exception; it becomes the culture.
And let us not forget the biting edge of poverty. In struggling neighborhoods, where hunger gnaws and hopelessness lingers, drugs become a cheap anesthetic. Students who grow up watching neighbors drown frustration in chang’aa or bhang carry the same habits into the classroom. For them, intoxication is not just recreation; it is survival.
Finally, there is the restless curiosity of adolescence itself. Youth is a season of experimentation, of testing boundaries and daring limits. Without guidance, that curiosity veers toward cigarettes, alcohol and pills. What begins as a dare between friends easily hardens into addiction before a child even realizes the trap has closed.
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All these threads weave the ugly fabric of drug and substance abuse in our schools. The causes are not mysterious; they stare us in the face. Peer pressure, broken homes, ready supply, stress, media glamor, weak discipline, poverty and curiosity; this is the anatomy of the crisis.
The tragedy is not just the wasted lives but the silence around them. Teachers whisper warnings, parents shake heads, authorities make statements, yet the problem spreads. Every drug hidden under a mattress, every puff behind a dormitory, every sip at a backstreet kiosk is another nail in the coffin of our collective future.
The way forward demands more than hand wringing. Parents must model the discipline they preach. Schools must enforce rules consistently, not selectively. Communities must shut down the drug dens lurking near learning institutions. Government must strengthen policy, not just on paper but in practice. And above all, students themselves must be taught that true courage is not in following the crowd but in standing apart from it.
Kenya cannot afford to gamble with her children. The fight against drugs in schools is not optional; it is urgent, necessary, and non-negotiable. If we fail to act, the silent fire will not just burn our learners; it will consume the very promise of the nation.
By Raphael Ng’ang’a
Raphael Ng’ang’a is a seasoned teacher of English, writer and trainer with a passion for shaping young minds. He writes boldly on education, society and youth issues, blending sharp insight with creative flair.
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