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| Title: | Trapped in the Traffick: Growing Problems of Drug Consumption in Lagos |
| Author: | Klein, Axel |
| Year: | 1994 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Modern African Studies |
| Volume: | 32 |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Pages: | 657-677 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Nigeria |
| Subjects: | drug trafficking drug use drugs Health and Nutrition Law, Human Rights and Violence Urbanization and Migration |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/161568 |
| Abstract: | This article deals with the growing problems of drug consumption in Lagos, Nigeria, on the basis of the author's field observations from the drug 'scene' in both high and low density areas in the city in 1990. Until recently, conventional wisdom had it that Nigeria merely served as a transit point for heroin and cocaine. This tendency to concentrate on drug trafficking was reflected in the countermeasures designed by successive governments. However, while most cocaine/heroin arriving in Nigeria is smuggled onwards to the lucrative markets of Western Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, a considerable amount is consumed by a rapidly growing number of local drug users. There is evidence that the habit of taking hard drugs was first acquired by Nigerians during periods of study or vacations abroad. Drugs are used as an initiation into a subculture, for escapism, as conspicuous consumption; but they also feed into existing cultural patterns of hedonism, and are associated with darker powers. The real issue today is no longer the relatively trifling impact that a number of Nigerian carriers have on consumption elsewhere in the world, but the spreading drug habits among the urban population of a crisis-ridden African country. Notes, ref. |
