AS the world marks the Day Against Illicit Drug Abuse and Trafficking today, NMAMDI IYAMA, CHUKWUMA MUANYA, CHIEMEREM UMENNE and WOLE OYEBADE report that the global financial woes with their attendant psychological stress are pushing many more Nigerians to drug abuse and trafficking.
TWENTY-THREE YEAR-OLD Dom came back from Houston Texas to Nigeria three years ago. A resident of the United States, he was hooked on drugs. Devastated, his father who had spent over 40 years in the United States, could not handle the pain of watching his son succumb to the drug scourge in America, as the boy repeatedly flunked out of college, while his drug-induced behaviour started putting too much strain on the family.
Afraid that his son may commit a serious crime under the influence of drugs and end in jail, the frustrated man shipped him back home to Nigeria into the care of a close family friend, a Catholic priest who had been Dom’s godfather at Baptism.
Come August, Dom goes back to rejoin his family in America, his parents, two sisters and a brother. He is once again ‘normal’, ‘whole’.
Yesterday, he talked about his drug problems, and how he has been able to cope.
” I cannot say exactly when it started,” he said. “But it must have been when I was 17 and we had moved into a new area as Dad’s job took us to another part of the state and we had to move” he added.
‘In my new school, there were these boys whom I smoked cigarettes with and hung out with until one day, one of them brought grass, or cannabis, known here as Indian hemp or wee-wee. At first about three of us would not touch it until after sometime, we started having drags to see how it was. That was it.
The Guardian for more