Victory in the war against drugs
These highly addictive lolly lounges trap young girls in a sex for drugs cycle.
The term ‘lolly lounge’, as innocuous as it sounds, has become synonymous with Eldorado Park.
It conjures up seedy images of underage girls, cooped up in a dingy, smoke-filled room in which men commit unspeakable acts as they consume a variety of drugs.
The word ‘lounge’ should not be used to describe these drug dens because lounging is not one of the things the young women are required to perform.
There is a myriad of tales which abound in Eldos about these lolly lounges. Girls as young as 12-years-old are lured into these places and kept there as sex slaves.
Men-old and young-use them to satisfy their sexual urges and they are discarded once a fresh group of girls are trapped by their addiction.
Stories abound in Eldorado Park about young girls who are transformed from once vibrant, scholarly schoolchildren to addicts with glazed eyes and wasted bodies whose young lives are devoured bit by bit in these lolly lounges.
Parents and family member, frantic with worry, scour the streets in the search for a daughter, sister or cousin who has disappeared and are in the thrall of drug addiction.
Its grip is firm and police intervention, the Local Drug Action Committee, the Eldorado Park Community Policing Forum and residents have their hands full as the subculture of drugs and abuse take its toll on a community battling to understand how this monster was loosed in the community and where are parents going wrong in rearing their children.
Many residents are on the verge of taking matters into their own hands as burglary, rape, theft, robbery increase as a direct result of addiction and the overwhelming need for an addict to get that next fix.
The Eldorado Park made a breakthrough-albeit a small one-in ridding the community of a lolly lounge in Extension Eight on January 5 this year.
According to Eldorado Park police communications officer, Phillemon Khorombi, “The Eldorado Park Police Station commander, brigadier Pieter van Dyk received information regarding a lolly lounge which was operating in the area.”
“A task team was assembled and lieutenant-colonel Lubbe, captain Khorombi, captain Ngobeni and police from the sector tended to the complaint.
“When the team arrived at the scene, a search uncovered ammunitions, drugs and dagga.”
Khorombi said that two men, aged 28 and 45-years-old were taken into custody and charged with being in possession of dagga, drugs and ammunition.
The underage girls found on the premises were reunited with their families pending a full investigation into the lolly lounge.
Extension Eight residents can breathe a sigh of relief following this bust which dealt a major blow to dealers and users in the area.
