WHY DRUG LAWS MUST HEAL, NOT HURT 

WHY DRUG LAWS MUST HEAL, NOT HURT 

(A Balm for the Bruised Foundation True-Life Story)

It was 6:45 a.m. when the police broke into the dimly lit room at the end of Adebayo Street. The smell of burnt plastic and despair hung thick in the air.

Scattered syringes, broken bottles, and crushed pills told a story of chaos long before the officers dragged him out.

Tunde Adewale, once a bright, hopeful teenager with dreams of studying electrical engineering, was now a gaunt shadow of himself.

At twenty-six, he looked forty. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips cracked, his hands trembling. “You are under arrest for possession and use of hard drugs,” an officer barked. But Tunde didn’t resist.

He just stared blankly at the floor, as if arrest was the least of his worries.

His story, like many others, did not begin with a crime. It began with pain.

The Boy Who Wanted to Fly

Tunde was born in Ajegunle, Lagos, a neighbourhood known for its energy and struggle.

His mother sold pap by the roadside, and his father, a taxi driver, died when Tunde was ten. From then on, life became a daily hustle for survival. But Tunde had a spark.

He loved fixing things, radios, torches, anything electrical.

In secondary school, he earned the nickname “Engineer”. His teachers spoke of his brilliance; his classmates believed he would one day build something great. But the universe had other plans.

When his mother fell ill and was diagnosed with kidney failure, everything changed.

He started missing classes, working as a bus conductor to pay hospital bills.

The long hours, the exhaustion, the fear of losing her, it all became too heavy.

Then came Chuka, a streetwise friend who offered Tunde a little “help.”

“Just a puff,” Chuka said one night behind the bus park. “It will make you forget your worries for a while.”

Tunde hesitated. But the thought of his mother’s frail frame and the endless hospital queues blurred his judgment.

One puff became two. Two became a habit.

Within months, Tunde was hooked.

The Spiral

At first, it was marijuana. Then codeine. When his mother finally passed away, he slipped into a void.

The drugs became his comfort, his escape, his false sense of peace. He started stealing spare parts, skipping jobs, and getting into fights.

The community whispered.

“Such a waste of talent.”

“Why can’t he just stop?”

But no one asked why he started. No one asked what he needed to heal.

When Tunde was first arrested, he was sent to a correctional facility under Nigeria’s Drug Abuse (Control) Act. The officers saw a criminal, not a broken soul.

For six months, he was locked in a cell with twelve other inmates, murderers, robbers, and addicts like him. No therapy. No counselling. No rehabilitation. Just punishment.

When he got out, he went right back to drugs.

A Twist of Fate

It was a rainy evening when fate intervened. Tunde was loitering around Oshodi market, drenched, hungry, and high, when he collapsed near a small kiosk.

He woke up in a modest clinic run by Balm for the Bruised Foundation, a local NGO working on addiction recovery.

The nurse, a soft-spoken woman named Miriam, had found him unconscious and brought him in.

“You were lucky,” she said with a gentle smile. “Your system was shutting down.”

For the first time, someone didn’t call him a junkie or a criminal. They called him a person.

At Balm for the Bruised, Tunde was introduced to a different kind of rehabilitation, one rooted in empathy and education, not punishment.

There were therapy sessions, vocational classes, and group discussions where survivors shared their stories without fear or shame.

That’s where Tunde met Sola, a former banker who had lost everything to cocaine addiction but rebuilt his life after therapy.

“You can start over too,” Sola told him. “But you have to forgive yourself first.”

The Road to Recovery

It wasn’t an easy journey. There were relapses, moments of anger, days when Tunde wanted to give up. But Balm for the Bruised had a structure that believed in healing through purpose.

He started teaching basic electrical repair to other recovering addicts. The spark returned, not the kind that came from wires, but from within.

Through group therapy, Tunde realised how Nigeria’s punitive drug laws trapped thousands like him in cycles of crime and shame instead of offering hope.

Many of the men in his group were first-time offenders, young people caught with small quantities of drugs who ended up in prisons that hardened them instead of reforming them.

One of them, Bashiru, had been sentenced to five years for possession of two wraps of cannabis.

He left prison angrier, bitter, and more addicted than before.

“Inside there,” Bashiru recalled, “you learn new tricks, how to hide drugs, how to steal better. Prison is not reform. It’s a classroom for crime.”

A Law That Heals

It was stories like these that inspired Balm for the Bruised Foundation to launch an advocacy campaign, calling for Nigeria’s drug laws to prioritise prevention, education, and rehabilitation over punishment.

Tunde became one of their loudest voices. He travelled with the team to schools, markets, and media houses, sharing his story.

His message was simple but powerful:

“Punishment does not cure addiction. Compassion does.”

He spoke about the need for youth-friendly health centres, community-based counselling programmes, and awareness campaigns that target early prevention rather than waiting until it’s too late.

“Most people don’t wake up one morning and decide to become addicts,” he said during one campaign in Abuja. “It starts with pain, trauma, neglect, hopelessness.

We must treat the wound, not just the symptoms.”

The Turning Point

Months later, the Foundation invited key policymakers to a roundtable discussion on drug law reform.

When it was Tunde’s turn to speak, the room fell silent.

He began with a story, not about statistics, but about Chuka, his old friend who introduced him to drugs.

“Chuka didn’t make it,” Tunde said, his voice trembling.

“He died in a gutter two years ago, not because he was a criminal, but because no one ever thought he was worth saving.”

He paused, looking straight at the officials. “How many more Chukas must die before we realise that the war on drugs should not be a war on people?”

The silence that followed was deafening.

From Victim to Advocate

Today, Tunde works full-time with Balm for the Bruised Foundation as a recovery counsellor.

He helps others rewrite their stories, one conversation at a time.

He has also contributed to policy papers advocating for reforms similar to Portugal’s approach, where drug use is treated as a public health issue rather than a criminal one.

In that system, users are given access to healthcare, not handcuffs; therapy, not trials.

His advocacy has reached schools, churches, and even police training academies. The Foundation’s slogan, “Soothing your pain” has become a rallying cry for a new movement.

And yet, Tunde remains humble. “I’m still healing,” he often says. “But if my pain can save one life, then it was worth it.”

The Lesson

Tunde’s story is not just about redemption. It is a mirror, reflecting how society’s approach to drugs often deepens wounds instead of healing them.

Drug addiction is not a moral failure; it’s a public health challenge.

Laws that focus solely on punishment ignore the underlying causes, poverty, trauma, unemployment, and lack of access to mental health support.

For every Tunde who finds help, there are thousands still trapped behind bars, forgotten and condemned.

If we truly want a safer society, we must shift from criminalising addiction to humanising recovery.

A Call to Action

At Balm for the Bruised Foundation, we believe no one is beyond healing.

Our work continues, rescuing, rehabilitating, and reintegrating victims of substance abuse, while advocating for drug laws that prioritise prevention over punishment.

Because when the law heals instead of hurts, communities thrive.

If this story moved you, don’t let it end here. Support our work. Share this story. Be the balm someone needs today.

Follow Balm for the Bruised Foundation on:

www.balmforthebruised.org

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