DRUG USERS FACE THREAT OF GETTING KILLED BY MOBS NEW REPORT SHOWS
- Oct 1, 2023
- 2 min read
By Clive Ayuko
Nairobi, Kenya 1st October 2023
Active drug users with no source of revenue who resort to stealing to maintain their drug use lifestyle face the risk of getting beaten and often times even getting killed by mobs. This is according to a new report by Medicins Sans Frontieres titled I Can Change My Life Perception and experience of people who use drugs engaging in Medically Assisted Therapy in Kiambu County Kenya released at a Nairobi hotel late last week.
The study approved by the Ethics Review Board of Medicines Sans Frontieres and Kenya Medical Research Unit’s Scientific and Ethics Review Unit was conducted between 29th August 2022 to October 2022 sought to provide a comprehensive in-depth understanding of the perspectives of stakeholders including peer educators, community health workers, family members of Persons Who Use Drugs PWUD, Ministry of Health Staff, and community members living near rehabilitative Medically Assisted Therapy Clinics MAT.
Worldwide 284 million people use drugs with 60 million of such individuals on opioids in Kenya it is estimated that the number of people who used opioids stood at 26,673 in the year 2021 with 3112 of these individuals living in Kiambu County.
At the very beginning when ones starts using heroin in most cases between 1 to 2 sachets is smoked by a single individual in a day and end up using upto 10 sachets when fully addicted. Individuals who inject the drug although few in number usually inject upto 5 sachets of Heroin in a day. A single sachet in Mathare, Nairobi an area described as the heroin depot of Nairobi a Single Sachet costs Ksh 100, in cold regions like Limuru the same retails for Ksh200, in prisons it retails for between Ksh400- Ksh700.
The preoccupation of all drug users especially those who abuse Heroin is thinking about how to get money for the next dose. Jobs are not easy to find and most drug users even those under Medically Assisted Therapy face stigma and discrimination when looking or applying for jobs. The daily routine of Persons Who Use Drugs involves waking up at 3 AM in search of items to steal or sell to obtain money for their first dose of heroin. Then they spend the day searching for more money to purchase more heroin to sustain the addiction. The cycle continues until they take the final dose for the day also known the locker in the evening to allow them to sleep before repeating the same process again the next day.
Mob justice was mentioned a lot by the respondents as reported by one who said; ” Active drug users stole if they did not find any other means to generate money. And people got angry and aggressive and whenever they caught one others who join up with them to beat the individual sometimes to death” Many of the respondents concurred that Mob Justice was getting more frequent and represented a big risk for drug users.
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