I never knew that a country called Benin existed till I came across it in the United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC) World Drug Report 2020. Benin is a country in West Africa that is troubled by the same problems that almost the entire African continent faces. Countries like
India and
China supply arms and
opioids to these countries, in exchange for a place as trading partners to extract and funnel out precious minerals and petrochemicals. While affluent western nations get the cream of the
opium crop i.e. heroin, countries like Benin get the watered-down versions of opium as pharmaceutical opioids that India and China supply. In the process, the people of Benin get addicted to opioids and the
pharma companies in Asia reap vast profits, besides getting the right of way to clear out the African nation of its precious treasures. It is the old colonizing strategy of Europe being played out by the new aspiring colonists.
Tramadol is the opioid that is delivered from Asia to Benin. UNODC reports, in its World Drug Report 2020, that
'In West, Central and North Africa and the Middle East, tramadol – a pharmaceutical opioid not under international control – has emerged as a major opioid of concern. The drug, in addition to being diverted from the legal market, is mainly trafficked into those subregions in dosages higher than what is prescribed for pain management, with an increasing number of people with tramadol use disorder entering treatment.' India is the world's largest manufacturer of tramadol, which is a breeze for it considering that it is the world's largest producer of legal opium. The higher quality derivatives of legal opium - like heroin and morphine - are supplied to Europe and the US, and the lower quality derivatives - like tramadol and codeine - are supplied to Africa. It was only in April 2018 that India added tramadol to the regulated drugs under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of India. By this time, much of Africa had already been flooded with tramadol and there were reports of widespread abuse of this drug by society, including the youth. UNODC reports that
'The bulk of tramadol seized in the period 2014– 2018 was seized in West and Central Africa (notably in Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and the Niger), followed by North Africa (notably Egypt, Morocco and the Sudan) and the Near and Middle East (notably Jordan and the United Arab Emirates). In some instances, countries in Western and Central Europe (notably Malta and Greece) have been used as transit countries for tramadol destined for North Africa (Egypt and Libya), although some of the tramadol seized in Europe (in particular Sweden) was also intended for the local market. For the first time ever, significant seizures of tramadol were reported in South Asia (India) in 2018, accounting for 21 per cent of the global total that year, which reflects the fact tramadol was put under the control of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of India in April 2018. As the full-scale scheduling of tramadol in India took place in 2018,218 and India had been the main source for (illegal) tramadol shipments, the decline in seizures outside India in 2018 may have been the result of a disrupted market. By contrast, and probably as a result of the control in India, seizures of tramadol in that country increased greatly in 2018, and thus in South Asia as a whole (more than 1,000-fold compared with a year earlier).'
Even though tramadol is much cheaper than heroin, it still places a financial burden on the individual when he or she becomes a regular user. UNODC reports that 'The drug use survey in Nigeria reveals tramadol to be a more accessible opioid than heroin, although it is still relatively costly if used frequently. While use of tramadol appears to cost about one third the price of heroin ($3.60 versus $10 per day of use in the past 30 days), in a country where the minimum wage of a full-time worker is around $57 per month, regular tramadol use still poses a considerable financial burden on users and their families. There is no information on the prevalence of drug use in other West African countries, but treatment data reveal tramadol to be the main drug of concern for people with drug use disorders. Tramadol ranks highly among the substances for which people were treated in West Africa in the period 2014–2017. This was particularly the case in Benin, Mali, the Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo.'
The main justification globally for the high place at the table of medicines for
opium is its pain-relieving qualities. Despite widespread addiction to opium and rising global deaths from opioid overdose, opium remains the number one strategy globally for
addressing pain. Unfortunately, opium grows only in some places, and the supply is tightly controlled by the opium cartels of the world so as to ensure that the rich upper classes of the world never run short of the higher quality products of opium and also never fall short of the vast revenues they earn from its trade. UNODC reports that
'Medicines for pain relief are unequally distributed across regions. More than 90 per cent of all pharmaceutical opioids available for medical consumption were in high-income countries in 2018. Some 50 per cent were in North America, 40 per cent in Europe, and a further 2 per cent in Oceania. Those countries are home to about 12 per cent of the global population. Low- and middle-income countries, which are home to 88 per cent of the global population, are estimated to consume less than 10 per cent of pharmaceutical opioids.'
As a result of this, most opium of higher quality is delivered to the affluent nations while the poorer nations get the cheaper versions of it, if they are lucky. UNODC reports that 'The trafficking and availability of tramadol for its non-medical use is a public health concern, but limited distribution of tramadol for medical use would also pose a public health concern, in particular in Africa, where there is a chronic shortage of pain medications. There are no data on the availability and use of tramadol for medical purposes, but data on internationally controlled substances clearly highlight the gaps in the accessibility of pain medications. The general lack of access to opioid-related pain medications under international control is a specific problem for developing countries, which is even more pronounced in countries in West and Central Africa than in other parts of the world. Against this background of a de facto non-availability of internationally controlled opioids for pain medication for large sections of the population in West and Central Africa, tramadol – even though it is under national control in some West African countries – is in fact a widely available opioid in those countries, used for both medical purposes (including outside prescription) and for non-medical purposes'. UNODC further reports that 'The non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids is not a new phenomenon. It has been observed for decades as part of the polydrug use pattern among high-risk or regular opioid users. What characterizes the most recent opioid crisis is the emergence of non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids as the main phenomenon, leading to alarming rates of dependence and overdose deaths at the national level. The subregions most affected by this crisis are North America and West, Central and North Africa, where different opioids and different dynamics are driving the threat. In North America, the introduction of fentanyl and its analogues (fentanyls) in the drug market has resulted in a syndemic of use of opioids characterized by an unprecedented increase in opioid overdose deaths'.
The reliance on opium as the main pain-relieving drug in the world and its scarcity for the majority of the world - its poor and working classes - has meant the emergence of synthetic pain-relieving substitutes that try to mimic opium, like fentanyl, with even more lethal results. These synthetic substitutes, created in the pharma lab, are sometimes positioned as cheap opioids to vulnerable sections of the population. UNODC reports that 'In West, Central and North Africa, the opioid crisis is fuelled by tramadol; in North America, by fentanyls. Although those subregions have little in common in terms of economics, demographics or general patterns of drug use, both are struggling with an opioid crisis fuelled by substances that are easy to access and cheap to produce.' The global control and dominance over opium production, supply and use by the wealthy nations of the world for over 150 years now has resulted in a global crisis in pain management and the spawning of vast amounts of synthetic drugs. Both legal and illegal pain relievers are trafficked legally and illegally by the cartels involving criminals, pharma companies, politicians, physicians and law and drug enforcement. UNODC says that 'From what is known, it is possible to identify common threats and different dynamics in the two opioid crises, in Africa and in North America: • The ease of manufacturing, easy accessibility and low-cost production make the illicit markets for tramadol and fentanyls substantially more profitable for traffickers than are other opioids such as heroin. • The large-scale manufacture of tramadol and fentanyls for the illicit market started in a context of an absence of international regulations on tramadol and many fentanyl analogues or their precursors. • The interchangeability (or substitution) of fentanyl and tramadol within the pharmaceutical and illicit drug markets makes it more difficult to address their misuse. Their non-medical use is also seen in the context of self-medication, and thus carries less stigma or is countered by lesser legal sanctions than is the case with other controlled drugs.'
The problem with drugs like tramadol is that it is positioned as medicine whereas cannabis is positioned as a drug. In most people's minds, these days, anything that comes in tablet or pill form in blister packs, or as syrups and injections produced by a registered
pharmaceutical company is considered good medicine, especially when endorsed and prescribed by a
physician. What starts as prescription medication soon balloons into self-medication, abuse and addiction as the individual develops a dependency for the opioid. At some point, the individual completely bypasses the physician and starts obtaining the opioids directly from the pharmacy or from illegal sources like the
black market. In most African countries, data itself does not exist on the number of persons who obtain and use opioids legally or illegally. UNODC says that
'With the exception of Nigeria, where 4.6 million people were estimated to have used opioids – mainly tramadol – in 2017, population-level prevalence estimates of the use of opioids are not available for countries in West, Central and North Africa. However, many countries in those subregions report high levels of non-medical use of tramadol. For example, in Egypt, 2.5 per cent of male and 1.4 per cent of female students aged 15–17 had misused tramadol in the past year. Students in that country also reported the use, to a lesser degree, of heroin or opium/morphine in 2016. Furthermore, data on the provision of treatment suggest that the prevalence of the non-medical use of opioids is quite high in Egypt. Tramadol tablets available in some parts of Africa are reportedly intended for the illicit market and may be of a dosage higher than usually prescribed for medical purposes.'
Afghanistan is, of course the biggest producer of illegal opium, while
India is the biggest producer of legal opium. Both illegal and legal opium find their way across the world, mostly into the hands of the elites, while the majority of the world, its working classes and the poor, rarely come across it. UNODC reports that
'In line with the dominance of the opium production in Afghanistan, quantities of heroin and morphine seized related to Afghan opiate production accounted for some 84 per cent of the global total in 2018, a slight decrease from 88 per cent in 2017, the year of the bumper harvest in the country. Most of the heroin found in Europe, Central Asia/ Transcaucasia and Africa is derived from opium of Afghan origin, accounting for 100 per cent of all mentions in the responses to the annual report questionnaire by countries in Central Asia/Transcaucasia, 96 per cent in Europe and 87 per cent in Africa over the period 2014–2018.'
Where does cannabis figure in all this? Quite obviously by its absence. It can be safely said that the elimination of cannabis from the legally available produce market has enabled opium to grow to the extent that it has today. Cannabis was eliminated and opium promoted by the
same entities who now hold control over the global drug market because cannabis alone is sufficient to completely dislodge and displace opium as the world's leading
pain-relieving medicine. Not only that, it is also not addictive or lethal when consumed frequently or in large amounts. Besides this, cannabis can be grown in many more countries than opium, In fact, the whole of Africa has conditions
conducive to the cultivation of cannabis, and some of the finest cannabis grows across Africa. Not only this, Africa has a cannabis consuming culture that I believe exists for thousands of years, even though
recent scientific studies state that cannabis was introduced from India into Africa in the 13th century. I somehow find this highly unlikely. Cannabis was always the herb of the world's
poorest classes, its indigenous communities and tribal populations, especially in Asia, Africa and the Americas before the rise of the dominant classes of the world today who prohibited it. The
entities who determine global cannabis and opium policy belong to the rich upper classes of the world and span across all countries - the global elites - and many have become rich from the trade of opium and other substances in the absence of cannabis.
When the whole world suffers from pain, and even more so the poorer nations and the poorest among the society, it is ironic that the very persons responsible for inflicting pain on the world's people are the ones who have access to pain medicines today and who decide what medicine should be used for pain. The global legalization of cannabis will not only vastly reduce opioid usage among those who have access to it and can afford it, it will also enable the vast majority of the world's people to access it and afford it, by as simple a means as
growing it at home. Cannabis
as an agricultural crop can be grown in Benin for the use of its people as pain medicine, instead of opioids that need to be imported from India or smuggled in from Afghanistan. It is very likely that if cannabis develops into a major crop, which can be easily achieved, then there will be enough cannabis to meet the internal needs of the country and Benin will still have sufficient produce left over for export to the western societies that cannot grow their own cannabis but want to stuff their opium down everybody else's throat...
The very reasons why cannabis should be legalized are the reasons why those who benefit from its prohibition resist legalization. Unlike opium which has only one primary benefit - i.e. the relief from pain - it is not only the
pain-relieving abilities of cannabis that make it an urgent candidate for legalization, but also the vast plethora of additional benefits that it brings along that makes it a no-brainer in terms of legalization.
As medicine, cannabis can be prescribed for
more than two dozen medical conditions in the US including
post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD),
anxiety,
sleep,
digestion, appetite, cancer,
epilepsy,
autism,
skin wounds and conditions, and so on. Cannabis is far safer than the legal drugs -
alcohol and
tobacco - and much safer than the illegal drugs like
heroin,
methamphetamine and dangerous legal and illegal
synthetic pharmaceutical medications that very few can access and afford when it comes to recreational use. Cannabis reduces the spread of
HIV through needle sharing. Cannabis
enriches the soil where it grows unlike tobacco. Cannabis biomass is valuable
animal feed as the US is discovering today. Cannabis can be used for
bio-degradable plastics,
biofuels,
fabrics and textiles, ropes and fibers, footwear,
construction,
packaging and paper, construction of automobile bodies, and much more. Many industries that use petrochemical derivatives - non-biodegradable plastics, synthetic fibers and fabrics,
chemical pesticides and fertilizers, etc. - that cause great damage to the planet can move away to sustainable cannabis, healing the planet and reducing the green footprint of these industries in the process. Cannabis is less water and resource intensive and can be cultivated in even
dry climatic conditions. The US cannabis industry was worth more than $100 billion in 2024 despite it being
federally illegal. In the US, the cannabis industry generated more than
300,000 jobs in 2023. More than
35,000 research papers have been published on cannabis in the last decade and almost all of them debunk the myths that have been created to ban cannabis - that
cannabis causes insanity; that
cannabis is addictive; that
cannabis users are criminals; that only the
lowest classes of society use cannabis; that cannabis has
no medicinal value; that cannabis is more harmful than
opioids,
alcohol and
tobacco, and so on...
South Africa legalized cannabis for adult use in 2024, as did
Germany.
Uruguay legalized cannabis in 2014,
Canada in 2018.
Luxembourg and
Malta legalized it in between.
24 out of 50 US states have legalized cannabis for adult recreational use at the time of writing. The reasons why these nations legalized cannabis were mainly: to address the issues of opioid and synthetic drug overdose; to reduce the black market for cannabis which is the world's most widely consumed illegal drug; to protect the youth from criminal gangs and dangerous synthetic drugs; to provide effective and affordable medicine for its people; to ensure an adequate supply of cannabis to meet the needs of the upper classes; and so on. It is ironic that most of these nations that have legalized cannabis belong to the category of wealthy nations, barring Uruguay and South Africa. It is also ironic that the poorest nations of the world, those in Asia, Africa, and South America do not legalize cannabis even though they are the ones who need it the most. In December 2020,
the UN rescheduled cannabis from its most restrictive Schedule IV and moved it to its least restrictive Schedule I based on the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) which reported that the most harmful side effects of cannabis were talkativeness and laughter. The fact that the UN could not completely remove cannabis from its scheduled lists shows the clout that the elites who oppose cannabis legalization possess. The fact that since the UN rescheduling only a smattering of nations have legalized cannabis in some form shows the deep-rooted effect of the propaganda against cannabis that has been practiced for more than a century now. Most people still continue to view synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, opioids, alcohol and tobacco as safe and the natural medicinal herb cannabis as harmful.
I do not know much about the pro-cannabis initiatives in Benin but I sincerely hope, for the sake of its people, that the legalization of cannabis happens sooner rather than later. In most places where cannabis legalization has happened in some form, it is due to
grassroots movements by the people. Left to themselves, the elites will continue their exploitation of the world and its poor because the elites have the opium, alcohol, and even cannabis (procured from the black market) and the elites do not feel the pain that the rest of the world feels because of cannabis prohibition. Just a few days back, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi toured African nations like
Nigeria,
Egypt,
Uganda, etc. He chalked out arms deals with them and possibly also shored up the opioid trade deals to ensure that Indian pharmaceutical companies could continue to flood the African markets with cheap opioids. I am sure that most African nations that he addressed would have thought that they have struck a great deal, especially the ruling elite classes of these nations. Benin's flag, like many other African nations, is already in the colors of cannabis - red, gold and green. It is only a matter of making the symbol a reality, and making the health and sustainability of the nation a reality...Like Bob Marley sang in Work,
'We can make it work...'
Related articles
'The bulk of tramadol seized in the period 2014– 2018 was seized in West and Central Africa (notably in Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and the Niger), followed by North Africa (notably Egypt, Morocco and the Sudan) and the Near and Middle East (notably Jordan and the United Arab Emirates). In some instances, countries in Western and Central Europe (notably Malta and Greece) have been used as transit countries for tramadol destined for North Africa (Egypt and Libya), although some of the tramadol seized in Europe (in particular Sweden) was also intended for the local market. For the first time ever, significant seizures of tramadol were reported in South Asia (India) in 2018, accounting for 21 per cent of the global total that year, which reflects the fact tramadol was put under the control of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of India in April 2018.
As the full-scale scheduling of tramadol in India took place in 2018,218 and India had been the main source for (illegal) tramadol shipments, the decline in seizures outside India in 2018 may have been the result of a disrupted market. By contrast, and probably as a result of the control in India, seizures of tramadol in that country increased greatly in 2018, and thus in South Asia as a whole (more than 1,000-fold compared with a year earlier).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The drug use survey in Nigeria reveals tramadol to be a more accessible opioid than heroin, although it is still relatively costly if used frequently. While use of tramadol appears to cost about one third the price of heroin ($3.60 versus $10 per day of use in the past 30 days), in a country where the minimum wage of a full-time worker is around $57 per month, regular tramadol use still poses a considerable financial burden on users and their families. There is no information on the prevalence of drug use in other West African countries, but treatment data reveal tramadol to be the main drug of concern for people with drug use disorders. Tramadol ranks highly among the substances for which people were treated in West Africa in the period 2014–2017. This was particularly the case in Benin, Mali, the Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The trafficking and availability of tramadol for its
non-medical use is a public health concern, but limited distribution of
tramadol for medical use would also pose a public health concern, in
particular in Africa, where there is a chronic shortage of pain
medications. There are no data on the availability and use of tramadol
for medical purposes, but data on internationally controlled substances
clearly highlight the gaps in the accessibility of pain medications. The
general lack of access to opioid-related pain medications under
international control is a specific problem for developing countries,
which is even more pronounced in countries in West and Central Africa
than in other parts of the world.
Against this background of a
de facto non-availability of internationally controlled opioids for pain
medication for large sections of the population in West and Central
Africa, tramadol – even though it is under national control in some West
African countries – is in fact a widely available opioid in those
countries, used for both medical purposes (including outside
prescription) and for non-medical purposes' - United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'From
what is known, it is possible to identify common threats and different
dynamics in the two opioid crises, in Africa and in North America: • The
ease of manufacturing, easy accessibility and low-cost production make
the illicit markets for tramadol and fentanyls substantially more
profitable for traffickers than are other opioids such as heroin. • The
large-scale manufacture of tramadol and fentanyls for the illicit market
started in a context of an absence of international regulations on
tramadol and many fentanyl analogues or their precursors. • The
interchangeability (or substitution) of fentanyl and tramadol within the
pharmaceutical and illicit drug markets makes it more difficult to
address their misuse. Their non-medical use is also seen in the context
of self-medication, and thus carries less stigma or is countered by
lesser legal sanctions than is the case with other controlled drugs.' -
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In
West, Central and North Africa and the Middle East, tramadol – a
pharmaceutical opioid not under international control – has emerged as a
major opioid of concern. The drug, in addition to being diverted from
the legal market, is mainly trafficked into those subregions in dosages
higher than what is prescribed for pain management, with an increasing
number of people with tramadol use disorder entering treatment.' -
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The
non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids is not a new phenomenon. It
has been observed for decades as part of the polydrug use pattern among
high-risk or regular opioid users. What characterizes the most recent
opioid crisis is the emergence of non-medical use of pharmaceutical
opioids as the main phenomenon, leading to alarming rates of dependence
and overdose deaths at the national level. The subregions most affected
by this crisis are North America and West, Central and North Africa,
where different opioids and different dynamics are driving the threat.
In North America, the introduction of fentanyl and its analogues
(fentanyls) in the drug market has resulted in a syndemic of use of
opioids characterized by an unprecedented increase in opioid overdose
deaths' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report
2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Medicines
for pain relief are unequally distributed across regions. More than 90
per cent of all pharmaceutical opioids available for medical consumption
were in high-income countries in 2018. Some 50 per cent were in North
America, 40 per cent in Europe, and a further 2 per cent in Oceania.
Those countries are home to about 12 per cent of the global population.
Low- and middleincome countries, which are home to 88 per cent of the
global population, are estimated to consume less than 10 per cent of
pharmaceutical opioids.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'In
West, Central and North Africa, the opioid crisis is fuelled by
tramadol; in North America, by fentanyls. Although those subregions have
little in common in terms of economics, demographics or general
patterns of drug use, both are struggling with an opioid crisis fuelled
by substances that are easy to access and cheap to produce.' - United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'With
the exception of Nigeria, where 4.6 million people were estimated to
have used opioids – mainly tramadol – in 2017, population-level
prevalence estimates of the use of opioids are not available for
countries in West, Central and North Africa. However, many countries in
those subregions report high levels of non-medical use of tramadol. For
example, in Egypt, 2.5 per cent of male and 1.4 per cent of female
students aged 15–17 had misused tramadol in the past year. Students in
that country also reported the use, to a lesser degree, of heroin or
opium/morphine in 2016. Furthermore, data on the provision of treatment
suggest that the prevalence of the non-medical use of opioids is quite
high in Egypt. Tramadol tablets available in some parts of Africa are
reportedly intended for the illicit market and may be of a dosage higher
than usually prescribed for medical purposes.' - United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf'In
line with the dominance of the opium production in Afghanistan,
quantities of heroin and morphine seized related to Afghan opiate
production accounted for some 84 per cent of the global total in 2018, a
slight decrease from 88 per cent in 2017, the year of the bumper
harvest in the country. Most of the heroin found in Europe, Central
Asia/ Transcaucasia and Africa is derived from opium of Afghan origin,
accounting for 100 per cent of all mentions in the responses to the
annual report questionnaire by countries in Central Asia/Transcaucasia,
96 per cent in Europe and 87 per cent in Africa over the period
2014–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug
Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
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