Tik Tik Bang!

The MTN Sciencentre now has an exhibition on tik, the cheap and highly addictive drug linked to the gang warfare and perlemoen smuggling in the Western Cape.

Andreas Plüddemann (seen above) was quoted on the www.scienceinAfrica website as saying, "Nowhere else in the world has tik taken off in the way we are finding in these specific communities."

It would be interesting to see what Plüddemann, who's based at the Medical Research Council's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Group, thinks of our exhibit, which is sponsored by the Western Cape Education Department.

From the outside, it's hard to believe that any teenager would want to risk having a stroke, memory loss or rotten teeth. But Plüddemann, who's also completing his doctoral degree through the University of Cape Town's Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry, says, "It's a special problem. Adolescents, the 12- to 19-year olds, react very severely to tik. The fallout is serious."

The MRC runs a project called the South African Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (Sacendu) in six South Africa sites, including Cape Town. This has found that the demand for drug treatment for problems relating to tik is substantially greater in the city than other parts of the country.

"Since 2004 there has been a sharp surge of people coming forward for help, such is the rapid addiction rate," says Plüddemann. "This is extremely striking in terms of drug trends. Nothing else has taken that kind of sharp upward surge."

"We're just not getting it right when it comes to the non-content education in our schools," says Plüddemann. "We need to include substance abuse into our education. The life skills programmes are not hitting the mark. Educators must work with the kids, their teachers, principals, governing bodies, parents and the wider communities."

There are other aspects to tik that need special efforts. Consider that the backroom laboratories manufacturing the drug have to be cleared by teams specialising in biohazardous matter, such are the health hazards of the by-products in the process.

"There is an urgent need for research," he says, "not only to assess the prevalence of tik, but also to get a better understanding of the link between tik use and mental health problems and sexual risk behaviour."