The National Authority for the Campaign against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Nacada) is coming up with an amendment to the existing laws to combat the menace of online selling of alcohol to teens.
Nacada Acting CEO John Muteti has acknowledged the online sale of alcoholic substances has been a great hindrance to the fight against abuse.
Despite this, the current laws were drafted long before the growth and penetration of internet services in the country.
“Even kids who are young now can access the internet so they can access all these manners of drugs, they can buy alcohol online and that has made the situation worse,” he says.
“The law is not very clear about online sales. So, we are coming up with an amendment to the law which will ensure that the online sale of such things like beers and others are regulated,” Muteti said.
He noted that despite the law barring the sale of alcohol to underage consumers, online sellers take orders and make deliveries without demanding proof of age.
Most of the sellers, he said are out to make profits at the expense of the future of the consumers they are selling the products to.
“We want to ensure that not everybody can access such kinds of things online. We want to have very strict safety that nobody can sell this kind of drink to underage and if they do then there will be strict penalty.”
The latest report released by NACADA in May showed that children as young as six years are now being initiated into the vice.
The law stipulates alcohol should not be sold to individuals who have not attained the age of 18 years.
The authority has further identified poor parenting and peer pressure as other driving factors.
The report shows the age of initiation for tobacco use was six years, seven years for alcohol, eight years for cannabis, nine years for khat and eight years for prescription drugs.
The minimum age for initiation for heroin and cocaine is 18 and 20 years respectively.
From the report, one in every 11 youth aged 15 to 24 years translating to 632,846 youth were currently using at least one drug or substance of abuse.
One in every 20 or 367,606 are currently using alcohol, one in 31 translating to 230,130 are using tobacco while one in every 28 or 259,954 youth currently using khat.
