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The Emerging Drug Market In Africa


 




















In the early morning at a bar in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, electronic beats pump from a DJ on a stage. Shielded from the autumn rains under tarpaulins, a substantial crowd, mostly of young Kenyans but with several European and American expats, dances. Outside the women’s toilets, attendants turn their eyes away—in exchange for a tip—as groups of young people go in together and then wander out, wiping their noses.

The drug scene is not entirely new to Nairobi. “There has been cocaine here since I was 14 years old,” says one young Kenyan woman, who works for an e-commerce firm and is now 26. But whereas in the geriatric West recreational drug use is falling and many night clubs are closing, in Africa’s capitals it appears to be growing, both among the new middle class and the poor. Drug-use surveys are rare in Africa, but governments are worried.
Africans have consumed drugs for decades, if not centuries. Cannabis is grown and toked across the continent: the UN estimates that roughly 7.5% of African adults smoke weed in a typical year, almost double the global figure of 3.9%. In Somalia and Ethiopia, many men chew vast amounts of qat, a leaf with mild amphetamine properties, (much to the irritation of their wives).

The more recent spread of harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine is driven by the expansion of Africa as a transit route for chemicals on their way to Europe.
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