More than 3,500 drug addicts in Kwale are pleading with the county government and the UN to provide methadone for their rehabilitation.
Chanting slogans "we want methadone, we want methadone to save our lives", the group said the rehabilitative drug is crucial for their lives.
They told journalists at Teens Watch center in Diani, Kwale on Monday that they may be forced to abandon their families to satiate their .
"We leave our children with hunger and cannot manage our families anymore because of the addiction. Without the drug, one is like a dead man walking," Ali Mtanga, a member of the group, said.
Mtanga said most of the addicts may resort to stealing in the quest to buy drugs, a situation he says put their lives in danger.
"Governor Salim Mvurya and his team must do something to save our lives. We need methadone to help us stop using drugs," Mtanga said.
Read:
Teens Watch director Cosmas Maina said the youths urgently need methadone to survive.
"Our call to United Nation office on drugs and crimes is to keep their promise of providing the drug to help the addicts," he said.
Addicts in Malindi and Mombasa are said to have already received the rehabilitative drug while those for are yet to be provided with the same.
Ahmed Ali, a reformed drug addict, said that the county government and UNODC has delayed making methadone available for drug addicts as promised in May 2015.
"They said that it would be available within 120 days which elapsed long time ago. Many youths depending on methadone for their hygiene are giving up," he added.