200, 000 people died of drug abuse in 2012 –UN report

Some 200,000 people aged between 15 and 64 died from drug abuse related causes in 2012 alone, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime has said.

The largest number of deaths came from drug overdose involving opioids, said UNODC in its latest World Drug Report.

Risk of overdose death were linked to the availability and purity of the drugs in question, and increased with reduced tolerance, lack of treatment for drug dependence and use of more than one drug at the same time, the report noted.

The report, presented to National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and anti-narcotics agency NDLEA, said continued drug use had huge social and health consequences.

The UNODC country representative Mariam Sissoko who presented the report said “among 12.6 million people who injected drugs in 2012, more than 1.7million were living with HIV/AIDS, and may have been infected while injecting drugs.”

However, only one in six drug users have access to treatment for drug dependence-still less in Africa, where only one in 18 has access to treatment, mainly for cannabis use.

Nigerians have remained big users of cannabis, but the NAFDAC is more concerned about clamping down on precursors.

Precursors are industrial chemicals used in manufacture but are increasingly being converted into narcotics in “clandestine labs,” said the agency.

Caustic soda and toluene-used in paint thinners-are top on the list, but the UN drugs office has identified up to 90 precursors.

“These are chemicals that you will never suspect but then some people have found a way to convert them to banned narcotic drugs,” said Dr Paul Orhii, director-general of NAFDAC.

“We will be control even the other precursor chemicals more carefully to make sure they are not used for manufacture of these illicit narcotic drugs.”

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) insists increased consumption of cannabis, fuelling cultivation of massive farmlands of herbage in the southwest could back organised crime to jeopardize elections next year, if trafficking syndicates are not dismantled.

Much of the herbage has been marked for destruction, awaiting funding from the Presidency, said NDLEA chairman Ahmed Giade.

PHOTO From left: Head of number plate production plant, Abuja, Tijani Iliyasu; FRSC Assistant Corps Marshal, Hyginus Foumsuk; outgoing Corps Marshal Osita Chidoka; Justice of High Court FCT, Mwada Balami and Deputy Corps Marshal Motor Vehicle Administration,...