Africa is shoot
By Corinne Moncel
Past twenty years, the continent, from north to south, from west to east, more immune to drug use. It is far from the days when drug use involving only a ritual use: some iboga, a plant psychotropic potions witches in Equatorial Africa, to come into contact with the ancestors, a few leaves hallucinogenic datura, Sahel-Saharan Africa, to heal, stimulate or trance. Africa in the twenty-first century, change of scenery: it use to all floors. In children or soldiers living on the streets. Young people in need of work and future. The assets of the urban and rural multiplying the work force to make ends meet. Artists, and political elites to give a boost and indulge in some pleasure. Even cattle, oxen like those in Benin engraved – as their masters – the datura to hold on the big field work.
At the end of high school in Rabat and Cairo, one smoking a joint or two in the “dens” in Kinshasa or Kampala, we shoot the dagga, in the neighborhoods of glaucous Dakar or Nairobi, we find veins to inject da dose of heroin on the streets of Lagos or Port-Louis, we inhaled crack cocaine, in apartments or Johannesburg Bissau, one sniffs a line of cocaine on the docks of Dar es Salaam and Luanda is an amphetamine goes down …
Drug addiction has become a real public health problem in Africa. Yet it is still not treated as such in most pays.Toujours for the same reasons: relativization of the problem, lack of public funding for prevention and care, priority to other medical causes.
Cannabis, or marijuana, which takes the form of grass smoke (marijuana, hashish, dagga, ganja, etc..) or resin (hashish, shit), is the drug “preferred” African consumers: 63% of them engaged in it, according to figures from the 2009 United Nations Convention against Drugs and Crime (UNODC), estimated from the demand for treatment, against 20% in Europe, 23% in North America and 10% in Asia.
The world’s largest producer, Morocco, who specialized in exporting to Europe, has managed to create markets in North Africa and neighboring countries. Furthermore, cannabis has become a dominant culture to a local or regional consumption: of course in Ghana, where use is widespread since the 1960s, South Africa, the first sub-Saharan producer, Senegal, where it spread throughout the regions, the Democratic Republic of Congo between two rows of cassava, and in many countries where the culture is much more profitable than food crops.
Prices drop
Hard drugs, opiates (heroin and alternatives, such Subutex or methadone), cocaine and its derivative, crack, remain far behind the cannabis consumed respectively 17% and 7%, according to UNODC. Their use has increased in proportion to the amount passing through Africa, became a hub of world traffic.
All the experts know: every kilo ferried from one region to another destination, are tens or hundreds of grams in the country of transit. Habits are created, markets are emerging, the supply is abundant, prices fall (except in cases of artificial shortage by organized traffickers), consumption increases.
Le Quotidien d’Oran, 20/09/2011
Past twenty years, the continent, from north to south, from west to east, more immune to drug use. It is far from the days when drug use involving only a ritual use: some iboga, a plant psychotropic potions witches in Equatorial Africa, to come into contact with the ancestors, a few leaves hallucinogenic datura, Sahel-Saharan Africa, to heal, stimulate or trance. Africa in the twenty-first century, change of scenery: it use to all floors. In children or soldiers living on the streets. Young people in need of work and future. The assets of the urban and rural multiplying the work force to make ends meet. Artists, and political elites to give a boost and indulge in some pleasure. Even cattle, oxen like those in Benin engraved – as their masters – the datura to hold on the big field work.
At the end of high school in Rabat and Cairo, one smoking a joint or two in the “dens” in Kinshasa or Kampala, we shoot the dagga, in the neighborhoods of glaucous Dakar or Nairobi, we find veins to inject da dose of heroin on the streets of Lagos or Port-Louis, we inhaled crack cocaine, in apartments or Johannesburg Bissau, one sniffs a line of cocaine on the docks of Dar es Salaam and Luanda is an amphetamine goes down …
Drug addiction has become a real public health problem in Africa. Yet it is still not treated as such in most pays.Toujours for the same reasons: relativization of the problem, lack of public funding for prevention and care, priority to other medical causes.
Cannabis, or marijuana, which takes the form of grass smoke (marijuana, hashish, dagga, ganja, etc..) or resin (hashish, shit), is the drug “preferred” African consumers: 63% of them engaged in it, according to figures from the 2009 United Nations Convention against Drugs and Crime (UNODC), estimated from the demand for treatment, against 20% in Europe, 23% in North America and 10% in Asia.
The world’s largest producer, Morocco, who specialized in exporting to Europe, has managed to create markets in North Africa and neighboring countries. Furthermore, cannabis has become a dominant culture to a local or regional consumption: of course in Ghana, where use is widespread since the 1960s, South Africa, the first sub-Saharan producer, Senegal, where it spread throughout the regions, the Democratic Republic of Congo between two rows of cassava, and in many countries where the culture is much more profitable than food crops.
Prices drop
Hard drugs, opiates (heroin and alternatives, such Subutex or methadone), cocaine and its derivative, crack, remain far behind the cannabis consumed respectively 17% and 7%, according to UNODC. Their use has increased in proportion to the amount passing through Africa, became a hub of world traffic.
All the experts know: every kilo ferried from one region to another destination, are tens or hundreds of grams in the country of transit. Habits are created, markets are emerging, the supply is abundant, prices fall (except in cases of artificial shortage by organized traffickers), consumption increases.
Le Quotidien d’Oran, 20/09/2011
