Addressing Drug Abuse Among Youth with Disabilities in Zimbabwe

Drug and substance abuse is a challenge that knows no boundaries, impacting individuals and communities across the globe. Although drug abuse is recognized as a national crisis in the context of Zimbabwe, this paper argues that young persons with disabilities (YPWDs) are systematically sidelined in the national response to substance abuse. Yet in urban settings such as Harare, this constituency faces a heightened risk of drug abuse, which is exacerbated by the unique socio-economic challenges they face and social exclusion, as well as their limited access to inclusive support services. This study problematizes the critical and largely underexplored oversight of this group in national initiatives to address the drug pandemic. This oversight is reflected in the absence of references to YPWDs in Zimbabwe’s Multisectoral Drug and Substance Abuse Plan (2024–2030), the lack of disability-disaggregated data in national surveys such as the Afrobarometer report on drug abuse of 2025, and the silence on substance abuse within the National Disability Policy of 2021 and the Persons with Disabilities Act of 2025. In this respect, the paper argues that if this oversight continues unabated, it risks undermining efforts to end the drug abuse pandemic without leaving the constituency of persons with disabilities behind. To address this problem, the paper engages an Inclusive Care Ethics approach. Thus, drawing on this framework, this paper emphasizes the significance of incorporating the key tenets of relational responsibility, attentiveness, competence, and contextual sensitivity (responsiveness) in developing inclusive support and response systems to the challenge of drug and substance abuse. By synthesizing current legislative frameworks with existing literature, the study identifies systemic gaps. It offers an illustrative application of Tronto’s Inclusive Care Ethics framework to inform inclusive responses to the problem of drug abuse in Zimbabwe. Ultimately, it proposes actionable, community-rooted interventions to ensure that the fight against the drug pandemic does not leave persons with disabilities behind.