Dagga remains favourite

RESIDENTS of developing countries show signs of an increase in drug use. Moreover, there seems to be a shift towards new drugs and new markets.
These findings were made known in the World Drug Report 2010 that was released this past week.

Researchers found that dagga remains the world’s most widely produced and used illicit drug. It was established that dagga is grown in almost all countries of the world and is smoked by between 130 million and 190 million people at least once a year. In southern Africa alone, between 4,5 million and 11 million people used dagga in the past year.Namibian Police spokesperson Deputy Commissioner Hophni Hamufungu said that although Namibians also have a big problem with dagga, ‘production is a problem but not as much as consumption’. He said in the past it was believed that dagga was particularly prevalent in central and southern Namibia. ‘However, recently, there have been reports of dagga plantations found in the North.’Hamufungu said he didn’t know why dagga was so popular among Namibians. Its relatively low cost might play a role, he said.The World Drug Report states that there is a lack of drug treatment facilities around the world. In 2008 only around a fifth of problem drug users worldwide had received treatment, meaning that about 20 million addicts did not receive treatment.About 90 per cent of the world’s heroin is produced in Afghanistan, but that country accounted for only two per cent of the heroin use in the world, the rest being exported.According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) executive director Antonio Maria Costa, cocaine consumption has fallen significantly in the United States in the past few years, while the number of cocaine users in Europe has doubled in the last decade.According to the report, drug trafficking has a destabilising impact on transit countries and ‘underdevelopment and weak governance attract crime, while crime deepens instability’.Hamufungu said there were a number of plans to fight drug use in Namibia. One of these was the expansion of the Police’s drug law enforcement subdivision to enable the drug squad ‘to operate from all over the country’. This unit has mainly operated from Windhoek so far, he said. ‘Drugs are not only illegal, but it creates dependency. Economically, it also disrupts people and leads to other crimes,’ Hamufungu said.