The African continent is a prime target for those seeking fortunes. The Europeans - Belgians, Dutch, English, French,, etc. - plundered Africa for its ivory, gold and its diamonds. In addition to the above, the modern-day colonizers seek to plunder Africa for its rich minerals and petrochemicals. It is not only the taking away of resources that is happening, but there is also the flooding of the African continent with the harmful and destructive products that the modern colonizers have created that is happening in parallel. Instead of learning the sustainable ways of life that much of Africa still practices, the modern colonizers seek to convert African nations into imitations of their own synthetic, meaningless and destructive ways of life. All this is marketed as progress and development. We see Africa becoming a dumping ground for synthetic pharmaceutical products, non-biodegradable plastics, synthetic fabrics and chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The elites of Europe and Asia fool the elites of Africa into believing that the way to wealth and power is the destruction of nature and the oppression of the people. The African elites who have been seduced with so-called modern life now wield vast power over their people through the use of arms, alcohol, tobacco, opioids, methamphetamine and fentanyl.
While the cream of the elites in the Americas, Europe and Asia get the heroin and the cocaine, the people of Africa get the cheap opioids that cannot be shipped to most other nations in the world. Afghanistan, Mexico and Myanmar provide the high-end opium to the global elites. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in its World Drug Report 2020, reported 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.'
India, the world's largest legal producer of opium, has been channelizing all the high-end opium derivatives to Europe and the US, and the low-end opium derivatives to countries like Côte d’Ivoire. Tramadol is one of the low-end opioids that India floods the African continent with. UNODC reported 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.' Until 2018, Indian pharmaceutical companies had a free hand in flooding Africa with tramadol. Regulatory control from 2018 in India and African countries resulted in some measure of reduction. UNODC reported 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, 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).' Not only is Côte d’Ivoire a destination for Indian tramadol, but it is also a transit point for shipping tramadol to other surrounding regions including the Middle East. UNODC reported, in its World Drug Report 2020, that 'Based on recent seizure data, the main destinations of illegal tramadol shipments are countries in West and Central Africa (including Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, the Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and the Sudan) and Northern Africa (mostly Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Libya), from which some tramadol is further smuggled to countries in the Near and Middle East (including Jordan and Lebanon).'
The problem of controlling the flow of cheap opioids into Africa is the problem of pain management that occurs across the world in the poorest nations. 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'.
The addiction to cheap opioids creates a steppingstone for the local manufacture of even more dangerous synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. UNODC reported 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.' UNODC further states 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'. Even though the UNODC World Drug Report 2020 did not report fentanyl as a major threat in Africa, I am sure that the situation has changed today. UNODC said 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.' Once the addiction to opioids becomes deep-rooted, it is only a matter of time before people become desperate enough to start manufacturing fentanyl locally to meet their craving. So, I would not be surprised at all if fentanyl is rapidly increasing its presence in the African nations. In the name of Chinese trade and cooperation, I am sure that the knowledge, precursors and support for manufacturing fentanyl is being provided by the Chinese to African countries.
The global elites banned the best medicine for pain management, cannabis, so that they could market their opium in its place. Non-addictive cannabis can be grown in most parts of the world, especially in the African nations where conditions are ideal to grow some of the best cannabis in the world. But then this would mean that locally grown cannabis would be available in every African nation. It would mean that not just the elites, but also every section of society, especially the poorest, marginalized, the working classes and the indigenous communities would be able to grow, access and afford cannabis. That would be a major blow for the opium producing nations of the world and the industries that sell them as these entities make vast sums of money based on the fact that opium can only be cultivated in a few places. Despite the fact that opium-based pain medicine reaches only the elites of the world, and despite the fact that most people in the world suffer from lack of pain medicine, the elites ensure that cannabis remains prohibited. If the majority of the world goes without pain medicine as a result of this, too bad. 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 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.'
One of the key problems in the poorer countries of the world is the lack of clear data on opioid usage rates. UNODC reports 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.'
It is not just for pain management and addressing the opioid menace that cannabis is useful. Cannabis is universal medicine that can address a wide variety of illnesses, replacing whole classes of synthetic pharmaceutical drugs. Cannabis has the potential to mitigate the effects of runaway global climate change caused by the overuse, misuse and abuse of petrochemicals, synthetic pharmaceuticals, synthetic fabrics and cotton, non-biodegradable plastics, chemical pesticides and fertilizers and fossil-fuel based construction through its industrial applications. Cannabis can reduce harms to public health caused by alcohol, tobacco and legal and illegal synthetic drugs. Cannabis can boost the economy by spawning a multi-billion-dollar sustainable industry that provides livelihood to not just farmers, but a wide set of individuals. Cannabis legalization can reduce the black market for drugs and reduce crime enabling law enforcement and drug enforcement to focus on real crimes. Cannabis legalization will reduce the discrimination against and oppression of the working classes, minorities, indigenous communities and the poorest sections of society since cannabis prohibition is essentially class and caste discrimination perpetrated by the elites. Cannabis legalization will protect the youth besides providing access to the safe medicinal herb for those sections of society that suffer the most due to its prohibition - women, the elderly, the sick and the poor. Cannabis legalization will boost local tourism, the food industry, the beverages industry, wellness, animal feed, research, etc. Cannabis legalization offers a sustainable way to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.
We see globally that the nations who brought about cannabis prohibition are now themselves looking to procure cannabis since most of these nations do not have conditions suitable for local cultivation of it. The elite nations of the world today depend on traditional cannabis cultivating nations to provide them with good quality cannabis. The potential for African nations to grow high quality cannabis that can be used locally as well as exported to Europe, Oceania and North America is something that remains largely untapped due to lack of political will and misinformation.
South Africa legalized cannabis for recreational use in April 2024, a few years after its Constitutional Court had ruled that cannabis prohibition violated the constitutional rights of individuals. Zimbabwe has reduced tobacco cultivation and replaced it with cultivation of smokable hemp. This not only boosts public health, but also soil health. Smokable hemp is one of Zimbabwe's leading exports in the recent past. Morocco legalized the cultivation of cannabis for export. Canada, Uruguay, and Germany have legalized cannabis, recognizing the potential of the plant and the error of prohibition. Most other nations remain firmly in the grip of the upper classes and castes that make up the ruling elites who benefit from the oppression of the people and the destruction of the planet. 24 US states have legalized cannabis for recreational use and 38 US states have legalized cannabis for medical use (at the time of writing). The US states with legalized recreational cannabis are seeing billion-dollar revenues from cannabis sales that are breaking records month on month. The cannabis industry in the US is projected to have a $100 billion impact in 2025 despite the federal government refusing to legalize cannabis much against the wishes of the majority of the people. Canada's early mover status has made it one of the leading cannabis exporters in the world today, along with the Netherlands, Denmark and Israel.
Côte d’Ivoire must embrace cannabis as a central part of its sustainable growth strategy for the coming future. The infrastructure in place for the growing of coffee and cocoa can be easily replicated for cannabis. Committing the same mistakes that North America, Europe and Oceania did will only hasten the destruction of the natural world and all living beings that depend on it. Cannabis is the most potent weapon to break down the global barriers that have been created on social, economic, religious and political grounds. Seeking out the indigenous varities of cannabis that exist in Côte d’Ivoire, reviving them, nurturing them and promoting their biodiversity is critical. The large-scale introduction of cannabis into business, the economy, industry, medicine, society and spirituality is key to sustainability and the well-being of the people. Cannabis must be completely legalized so that the poorest sections of society can grow it, consume it and trade in it, thus improving their livelihood. The indigenous communities that have knowledge of cannabis must be protected, encouraged and supported to create the ecosystems for cannabis revival. As the world wakes up once again to the truth of cannabis, the demand for cannabis is only going to grow exponentially and this is where African, Asian and South American nations can benefit greatly. The global legal trade in cannabis is going to possibly overshadow the petrochemicals and synthetic pharmaceutical industries in the coming future and the nations that can grow good quality cannabis at scales that are sufficient for both internal needs and export are going to thrive. This may, in small measure, be compensation for the harms inflicted on these nations by the colonizers from North America and Europe in the past, and China and India in the present. The ways that led North America and Europe to amass wealth are no longer open. They have been found out to be wanting and unsustainable. The way of cannabis is the way forward...
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'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, 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
Based on recent seizure data, the main destinations of illegal tramadol shipments are countries in West and Central Africa (including Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, the Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and the Sudan) and Northern Africa (mostly Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Libya), from which some tramadol is further smuggled to countries in the Near and Middle East (including Jordan and Lebanon). - UNODC
'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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