Accra, Ghana// – The sale and consumption of cocaine has been growing in Ghana’s capital city, Accra for the past two years and more.
On a daily basis, an average of 300 people, young and old, rich, and poor, throng the New Town, Tabora Alhaji, Tudu suburbs and other suburbs of Accra to buy substances suspected to contain cocaine for use.
The sale of the cocaine popularly known to its consumers as “white powder” has spread to most of the bars, pubs and nightclubs dotted across the capital city.
These young people only need to dish out between GH¢60.00 ($5) to GH¢120 ($10) to get the cocaine, which connoisseurs say is very expensive.
The suspicion there is that the cocaine, which ordinarily is injurious to human health, is adulterated and comes as double jeopardy to the health of addicts.
The growing sale and consumption of substances suspected to be deadly cocaine is not typically to the suburbs mentioned above but almost all shanty and slum communities in the Accra metropolis.
A recent visit to some of these cocaine sniffing areas around the metropolis, saw young men and women “doing the things” in the open.
The team was amazed to see them inhaling, sniffing, and drinking concoctions, while others were injecting themselves with the stuff in the full glare of the public.
Causes
Some of the young men blamed the increase in the sale and consumption of cocaine in the country to unemployment, economic hardship, and the general lack of opportunities. Others also attributed it to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic which devastated Ghana and across the world.
Cocaine market reasserts itself after COVID-19 bump
The COVID-19 pandemic had a disruptive effect on drug markets. With international travel severely curtailed, producers struggled to get their product to market.
Night clubs and bars were shut as officials ramped up their attempts to control the virus, causing demand to slump for drugs like cocaine that are often associated with those settings, according to Global Report on Cocaine 2023.
However, the most recent data suggests this slump has had little impact on longer-term trends. The global supply of cocaine is at record levels.
Almost 2,000 tonnes were produced in 2020, continuing a dramatic uptick in manufacture that began in 2014, when the total was less than half of today’s levels, it reveals.
“The surge is partly a result of an expansion in coca bush cultivation, which doubled between 2013 and 2017, hit a peak in 2018, and rose sharply again in 2021. But it is also due to improvements in the process of conversion from coca bush to cocaine hydrochloride”.
In parallel, there has been a continuing growth in demand, with most regions showing steadily rising numbers of users over the past decade.
Although these increases can be partly explained by population growth, there is also a rising prevalence of cocaine use. Interceptions by law enforcement have also been on the rise, at a higher speed than production, meaning that interdiction has contained the growth of the global amount of cocaine available for consumption, the report says.
Dominance criminal networks
The sale and consumption of cocaine could also be attributed to the Criminal networks from Nigeria which appears to play an especially significant role in smuggling activities across West and North Africa.
They are active globally, supported by a segment of the Nigerian diaspora and a large network of drug couriers.
Nigerian groups are known for trafficking small quantities by means of mules on passenger flights. Data from Brazil show that in each year since 2018 the most common foreign nationality of drug mules arrested at Brazilian airports has been Nigerian, Global Report on Cocaine 2023 indicates.
Nigerian trafficking groups are understood to be tribed-cells of four or five members, where each member of the cell has a small number of people working for them without knowing the members of the core group. They are thought to collaborate with larger groups outside of the country.
Furthermore, most of the people who buy the substance in these shanty and slum areas are people of low finances. The “big guys” get the substances from the modernised areas.
The cocaine substance is also of very high demand at the joint located near fuel filling stations at the Accra metropolis. ‘Clear’ and ‘boom’ are the two most popular cocaine kinds that sell the substance.
The process of acquiring the cocaine is simple; you just drive or walk to the vicinity at any time of the day and either boldly walk to the joint to purchase yourself or hire the service of the ‘ghetto boys’ to buy for you.
There is no stress at all. The ‘ghetto boys’ are jobless street youth who are ever eager to offer any kind of service so to have an opportunity of taking a short at cocaine, you can use any of them.
Visits by this website revealed that a lot of people, mostly boys in their formative years who ought to have been at school preparing themselves for future life, have so much embraced and become addicted to cocaine and marijuana use that they spend very little on food.
They look lean, dirty, and drained of all energy but what keeps them on their feet.
Asem (not real name), one of the popular sniffers in the area says: “Master, we have the ‘clear’ and the ‘boom’, it is very strong; which one do you prefer?”
The team opted for the ‘clear’, the more expensive brand at the joint, which supposedly very responsible people who drive in posh cars throng there on a daily basis to buy through middlemen.
After successfully obtaining the substance, the team was shocked to find that a tip it gave Asem, the middleman, after employing his service, was used to buy two rolls of the stuff for his personal use.
He wouldn’t consider food, an item of clothing or any other thing as preferred option; as far as he was concerned, there was no opportunity cost at all.
Further checks revealed that the rate of deaths among the youth engaged in the sniffing is unusually high. A nearby shopkeeper laments, “You see, my brother, the cocaine kills them easily, but they don’t stop.”
For the benefit of the curious and uninitiated, the snuffling is done by dropping a small quantity of the cocaine on a sheet of paper, preferably the ones used to rap chewing gums.
Heat is then applied through a lighter beneath the sheet and the vapour that evaporates is sniffed for seconds until the user gets very high. And sniffing is currently in vogue, far more popular than all the other practices.
Another worrying development the site found out was the fact that several hostels housing students from various institutions in the capital are situated in the area, posing the danger of most students indulging in the practice.
The sniffers prefer places where there is heat to facilitate, according to them, the process.
Parents whose children live in the vicinity close to the school could, therefore, monitor their wards by looking out for those who frequently experience intense seating and get easily agitated and often like to be at places where there is heat.
The police, the site is reliably informed, have on countless occasions raided the areas noted to be a dent for cocaine users to arrest perpetrators of the crime, but the cocaine dealers always regroup shortly after every raid. This phenomenon has been going on for years.
What can be done
Police must therefore intensify their patrols in the metropolis to arrest people who are the sellers and consumers of cocaine to deter others especially the youth from engaging in the act.
The Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) which is a Ghanaian agency under the Ministry of Interior, with the formulation and enforcement of narcotics laws in the country as a matter of urgency should come out with new laws and other strategies to contain the growing cocaine sale and use.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report
Email: mk68008@gmail.com