#DoseOfDeath: Scottburgh drug users are smoking dead people’s ashes
Countless memorial stones have been broken open and their contents looted.
HOW sick has society become that drug addicts apparently plunder ashes from memorial walls to ‘spice up’ their whoonga?
The Mail has reported previously on the Scottburgh cemetery being vandalised, yet it carries on unabated.
From trading highs through injecting themselves with a high-user’s blood, to now smoking the ashes of cremated people, drug addicts might just have started a new trend.
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Frighteningly, this is not just the scenario for a horror movie.
It is now believed that ashes looted from memorial walls are being used as a mixture to add volume to the street drug whoonga. Nearly two years have passed since the Scottburgh Cemetery Memorial Wall was first vandalised.
At first, suspicions and findings led to the belief that the grounds were being vandalised by people practising the ‘dark arts’.
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Since then, the cemetery grounds have been left to deteriorate, causing large numbers of people to come flooding into the Mail offices to share their frustration regarding the lack of proper access control and security at the cemetery.
Countless memorial stones have been broken and ashes looted. One of the walls literally has no more occupied spaces.
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Generally, the mixture of the drug whoonga is believed to consists mostly of heroin, morphine and strychnine (rat poison). The rat poison is used as a cutting agent in order to increase the volume.
It would seem as though human ashes are now being used to replace the rat poison or simply added to the mixture.
Whoonga has also been found to contain trace amounts of anti-retro viral drugs – also used as a cutting agent.
Shocking as this may seem – unbelievable even – the little old South Coast cemetery is not the only one being raided.
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According to reports published on the Sowetan Live’s website, an employee at a cemetery in Kempton Park has come forward, stating that more than 50 memorial stones had been vandalised by nyaope (whoonga) users, who steal the ashes.
The memorial stones at Scottburgh Cemetery have been vandalised almost on a weekly basis.
Last year during the December investigation into the vandalised Wall of Remembrance, a local woman insisted, while in talks with Umdoni Head of Community Services, Pooven Pillay, that security measures be implemented to ensure that such incidents never occurred again.
At the time, Mr Pillay was at the cemetery when the woman discovered her mother’s memorial stone had been destroyed.
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Talks of cemetery maintenance plans were plentiful in February this year when, during a council meeting, such was suggested.
However, the only ‘maintenance’ that has been carried out so far has been the cutting of grass and trimming of bushes.
Umdoni Municipality has again been requested for comment. However, no response has as yet been received.
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