Heroin trafficking rises in schools
Mar 12, 2006
NATALI Ukele, the director of Hope Recovery Center, Bweyogerere, says he has treated many people on heroin. Ukele has many silver foils stained with heroin, which his former clients were using to inhale ‘brown sugar’, a cheap form of heroin.
By Oscar Bamuhigire
NATALI Ukele, the director of Hope Recovery Center, Bweyogerere, says he has treated many people on heroin. Ukele has many silver foils stained with heroin, which his former clients were using to inhale ‘brown sugar’, a cheap form of heroin.
Over the years, during my time as a counsellor in two residential treatment centres for addicts, I have observed that there were as many heroin addicts seeking treatment as were alcoholics.
“I don’t take injectable heroin,†confessed one of my clients. “ I smoke ‘brown sugar’. We burn it on silver foil and inhale the fumes. The injectable is available in slums like Katwe, Kikubamutwe and Kisenyi. But you can’t tell who the real dealer is. We, addicts, deal with middlemen. Some of the drug-users are policemen. Dealers sell heroin to us and take the money to the big men elsewhere. There are many middle and upper class people taking heroin, but most of the addicts are from the slums or secondary schools …â€
Heroin is deadly. A dose costs sh20,000. “I need about three doses every day,†confessed another of my clients. “That is why many addicts steal. I had friends in the slums that would bang people on the head and steal their phones.â€
“Others had resorted to armed robbery or stealing their parent’s property. When you don’t take your dose, you go into withdrawals and it feels like hell: you vomit, have diarrhoea and feel like razor blades are cutting you everywhere,†he adds. “We call our heroin joints ghettos. It is there that we sit and inhale the fumes of our brown sugar. Then we get high and sit in a trance-like state, not talking to each other for hours.â€
A report by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in 2005 revealed that Entebbe International Airport is used as a transit route for heroin from the Far East, en route to South Africa. Drug seizures in 1998 and 1999 indicated an increase in the trafficking of heroin to East Africa from Pakistan, Thailand and India.
Uganda Revenue Authority recently reported that parcels are increasingly being used to traffic heroin. Most drug-abusers were found to be aged 14-45 years.
“We are not aware of the presence of intravenous heroin,†said Pearson Barasha, the officer in charge of Uganda Police Anti-narcotics Unit.
There is the brown and white heroin and it has the same demand. Heroin and cocaine are not commonly consumed because they are expensive.
“Most drug users are school children,†he added. Barasha said there have been cases of drug trafficking especially among females and students in higher institutions of learning.
Intravenous heroin-use brings with it the risk of the spread of HIV/AIDS as addicts resort to sharing needles “In eastern, central and southern Africa, more drug-users are injecting heroin,†stated the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board in 2002. Studies by WHO in 2003 revealed that 4% of registered HIV cases in North Africa were due to intravenous drug-use. In Mauritius, 21% of HIV-infected people got AIDS as a result of IDU.
In Nigeria, a study done in 2000 showed that heroin and cocaine-users were twice as likely to get infected with HIV as non-users.
The consumption of heroin is fast on the rise not only in Uganda, but Africa as a whole. Heroin-use rose by 40% in South Africa in 2002.
A 2005 UNODC report confirmed the presence of heroin in Uganda and a UNDCP 1997 report pointed out that Africa traditionally served as a transit route for drugs like heroin to Europe, but because of their falling prices, Africans are consuming them.
UNDCP estimated 180 million drug addicts. Of these, 9.2 million are heroin addicts. A total of 61% are from Asia, 15% from Europe, 13% from America, 6% from Oceania and 5% from Africa.
According to studies done by UNODC, Uganda has syndicates from Sierra Leone, German, Britain, Pakistan and Nigeria. The worst affected countries in Africa are Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya, Botswana, Zambia, and South Africa. It further reveals that there are up to 300 crime syndicates trafficking in drugs in South Africa alone.
NATALI Ukele, the director of Hope Recovery Center, Bweyogerere, says he has treated many people on heroin. Ukele has many silver foils stained with heroin, which his former clients were using to inhale ‘brown sugar’, a cheap form of heroin.
Over the years, during my time as a counsellor in two residential treatment centres for addicts, I have observed that there were as many heroin addicts seeking treatment as were alcoholics.
“I don’t take injectable heroin,†confessed one of my clients. “ I smoke ‘brown sugar’. We burn it on silver foil and inhale the fumes. The injectable is available in slums like Katwe, Kikubamutwe and Kisenyi. But you can’t tell who the real dealer is. We, addicts, deal with middlemen. Some of the drug-users are policemen. Dealers sell heroin to us and take the money to the big men elsewhere. There are many middle and upper class people taking heroin, but most of the addicts are from the slums or secondary schools …â€
Heroin is deadly. A dose costs sh20,000. “I need about three doses every day,†confessed another of my clients. “That is why many addicts steal. I had friends in the slums that would bang people on the head and steal their phones.â€
“Others had resorted to armed robbery or stealing their parent’s property. When you don’t take your dose, you go into withdrawals and it feels like hell: you vomit, have diarrhoea and feel like razor blades are cutting you everywhere,†he adds. “We call our heroin joints ghettos. It is there that we sit and inhale the fumes of our brown sugar. Then we get high and sit in a trance-like state, not talking to each other for hours.â€
A report by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in 2005 revealed that Entebbe International Airport is used as a transit route for heroin from the Far East, en route to South Africa. Drug seizures in 1998 and 1999 indicated an increase in the trafficking of heroin to East Africa from Pakistan, Thailand and India.
Uganda Revenue Authority recently reported that parcels are increasingly being used to traffic heroin. Most drug-abusers were found to be aged 14-45 years.
“We are not aware of the presence of intravenous heroin,†said Pearson Barasha, the officer in charge of Uganda Police Anti-narcotics Unit.
There is the brown and white heroin and it has the same demand. Heroin and cocaine are not commonly consumed because they are expensive.
“Most drug users are school children,†he added. Barasha said there have been cases of drug trafficking especially among females and students in higher institutions of learning.
Intravenous heroin-use brings with it the risk of the spread of HIV/AIDS as addicts resort to sharing needles “In eastern, central and southern Africa, more drug-users are injecting heroin,†stated the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board in 2002. Studies by WHO in 2003 revealed that 4% of registered HIV cases in North Africa were due to intravenous drug-use. In Mauritius, 21% of HIV-infected people got AIDS as a result of IDU.
In Nigeria, a study done in 2000 showed that heroin and cocaine-users were twice as likely to get infected with HIV as non-users.
The consumption of heroin is fast on the rise not only in Uganda, but Africa as a whole. Heroin-use rose by 40% in South Africa in 2002.
A 2005 UNODC report confirmed the presence of heroin in Uganda and a UNDCP 1997 report pointed out that Africa traditionally served as a transit route for drugs like heroin to Europe, but because of their falling prices, Africans are consuming them.
UNDCP estimated 180 million drug addicts. Of these, 9.2 million are heroin addicts. A total of 61% are from Asia, 15% from Europe, 13% from America, 6% from Oceania and 5% from Africa.
According to studies done by UNODC, Uganda has syndicates from Sierra Leone, German, Britain, Pakistan and Nigeria. The worst affected countries in Africa are Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya, Botswana, Zambia, and South Africa. It further reveals that there are up to 300 crime syndicates trafficking in drugs in South Africa alone.