The Drug Enforcement Commission took its prevention message to two of the country’s biggest church gatherings in August, teaching young people in Western Province how alcohol, tobacco and cannabis feed into depression, anxiety and self-harm. It is the Commission’s most direct acknowledgment yet that drug prevention in Zambia is as much a mental health conversation as a law enforcement one.
Key takeaways
- The DEC’s Education and Counselling Department sensitised youths at Seventh-day Adventist and Catholic camp meetings in Western Province from 23rd to 29th August 2026.
- Sessions drew a direct line between substance use and mental health challenges including depression, anxiety, suicide and self-harm.
- The Commission named alcohol, tobacco and cannabis as the substances most commonly abused by young Zambians.
- The approach marks a shift from arrests to prevention, working through institutions that already hold young people’s trust.
When the Drug Enforcement Commission wanted to reach young people in Western Province last month, it did not set up a roadblock or a courtroom. It went to church. Through its Education and Counselling Department, the Commission joined the Seventh-day Adventist and Catholic camp meetings held from 23rd to 29th August 2026, slotting drug prevention sessions between the prayers and reflections that anchor the annual gatherings.
What happened at the camp meetings
Camp meetings bring church members together for days of worship, teaching and fellowship, and they draw some of the largest youth audiences any institution in rural Zambia can assemble. The ECD team used that platform for structured sessions on drug and substance use, run alongside the normal programme rather than apart from it.
The subject matter went beyond the usual warnings. Officers walked the youths through the connection between substance use and mental health, naming depression, anxiety, suicide and self-harm as conditions that travel with prolonged alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use. Those three, the Commission says, remain the substances most commonly abused by young Zambians.
Why the mental health link matters
For years, Zambia’s drug conversation has run on two separate tracks: the police track, measured in arrests and seizures, and the health track, measured in admissions to Chainama and other psychiatric services. The DEC’s camp meeting sessions join the two. A young person who hears that cannabis can worsen anxiety, or that drinking deepens depression, is being given a reason to stay clear that has nothing to do with the fear of a cell.
The format mattered as much as the content. The Commission describes the sessions as highly interactive, with youths asking questions and sharing their own experiences. Prevention messaging that survives contact with an audience’s real life, rather than being recited at it, is the only kind that tends to change behaviour.
The church as a delivery channel
The choice of venue is the quieter story here. In much of rural Zambia the state’s footprint is thin, but churches run schools, clinics, youth clubs and camps with volunteer armies and weekly attendance figures most ministries would envy. A commission that pairs its enforcement mandate with an education arm that can walk into those networks buys reach it could not otherwise afford.
It also buys trust. Youths who would never attend a police-organised lecture will sit through a session their congregation has endorsed, sandwiched into a week they already chose to attend. The Commission says it remains committed to educating, empowering and engaging communities, particularly young people, and the camp meetings show what that looks like in practice.
What to watch
The test of sensitisation programmes is never the workshop itself; it is what happens months later, in the choices of the people who sat through it. Watch for two things: whether the DEC extends the church partnership to other provinces and denominations, and whether its counselling lines begin reporting more young people seeking help voluntarily, which is the outcome this kind of outreach is designed to produce.
More reporting on Zambia’s institutions and public policy is collected in our Leadership and Governance hub.
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