By Awa DK Conteh
The Gambia, Africa’s Smiling Coast, is known for its peace and tranquility, sunny and sandy beaches. The friendly nature of the people and the relative peace of the country has made it a bastion for tourists and travelers. But beneath this tranquility lies an epidemic of illicit drug abuse. A reality that is often shadowed by the bustling streets and an insulating social fabric which as Dr. Ismaila Badjie points out blinds us to glaring issues. “We see colossal challenges, akin to enormous elephants, and downsize them to “maybe a slightly bloated hippo”. Addiction, much like other dark secrets such as domestic violence or sexual abuse, is habitually pushed under the rug. Simply put, the prevalence of addiction in our society is as rampant as the daily consumption of starchy, sub-par rice”, Dr Badjie noted in a Point Newspaper Publication in 2023.
The Global Organized Crime Index succinctly captures Gambia drugepidemic when it states, “The Gambia serves as a transit country for heroin en route to Europe and the United States. Weak coastal and border controls, coupled with corrupt individuals within the border control service, make the country an ideal transit point. The Gambia also plays a significant role in cocaine trafficking, connecting South America to European and African markets. Organized drug trafficking groups have established the country as a hub, using its maritime ports and airports to transport large quantities of cocaine. There has also been an increase in the domestic cocaine market, fuelled, in part, by tourism of mainly European visitors. Drug traffickers transport cocaine and cannabis in canoes along rivers that connect to Senegal”.
The report also recorgnises that cannabis trade is significant, and cannabis is the most commonly seized drug in the country adding that the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in cannabis production and informal sector sales as people sought income opportunities. Individuals of all ages, including children as young as nine, are involved in the cannabis trade and have been arrested for possession. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (DLEAG) has revealed that in 2023 alone, over 600 drug related arrests were made indicating the high prevalence of the illicit drug epidemic. The states only anti illicit drug agency further confirmed this reality by providing a comparison of the drug related cases in 2023 and the preceding year when its notes in its report ‘in contrast, there is a minimal increase in the quantity of seizures of cannabis but a significant increase in the seizure of other drug types. Such as, Kush diazepam, MDMA and CRYSTAL METH which were not seized in 2022’.
In the midst of the drug crises, what is often overlooked and perhaps largely under reported is the prevalence of drug abuse among Gambian women and girls. Although the anti-illicit drug agency only reported 21 cases of drugs related to women from 2022 to 2023, the fact that a case of a women arrested with drugs across all seven regions of The Gambia indicates the fact that Gambian women are indeed involved not only in the consumption of drugs but also the trafficking and its sale. What is the implication of this reality both from a social, economic and health perspective remains largely under reported.
However, the very fact that illicit drugs is ravaging the lives of women and girls is not hard to see even though society due to cultural inertia would choose to downplay the problem. At least a quarter of the patients at Tanka Tanka, the Gambia’s only state-run mental health facility are women. The matron of the facility, Bakary Camara said majority of those women admitted at the facility are into cyber active substances which they called club drug. Ebrima Bah, a nursing officer at the same facility also hinted on the different types of drugs used by women ranging from cannabis to hard drugs like cocaine and deadly ones like the newly introduced Kush into the Gambian society. At the Tanka Tanka facility, victims of drug abuse often reference peer influence and societal pressure as conduits for getting into drug abuse.
It is obvious that women who use drugs needs to be responded to and they are more likely than men to experienced traumatic events, such as sexual and physical assault, due to the impact of use and misuse of substance and there is need for more concerted research and these social factors differentially affect women and may impact their initiation patterns of substance use including psychological distress and common mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression. To safeguarding the feature of the Gambia wherein a large percentage of the population are women and girls, there is the need for concerted effort to further the control of the entry into the market illicit drugs and its abuse particularly among women and girls.
It is commendable that the Government of The Gambia through the Ministry of Interior has since early 2017, design and implement strategies that creates an environment of law enforcement cooperation particularly in the area of drug trafficking and transnational organized crime vis-à-vis the security sector reform currently under implementation. The drug control act has also been overhauled taking due conscience of the complex nature of drug abuse by introducing non-custodial sentencing measures for cannabis abusers. It further provides a strong safeguard against using the drug control law in a way that will compromise or violate the rights of individuals. Whilst all these are noteworthy, the future of the country will remain bleak if more concrete action is not taken to effectively address the drug epidemic.
