K is for Khat, or how a feline learnt to miow...
Whatever country you come from a taste of home is a vital link to the old country, even on a fortnight’s beach holiday. A recent survey by checkout magazine documented what Irish ex-pats crave most. Top of the list? It was always going to be, wasn’t it? Tayto crisps won out followed by the likes of Cadbury’s chocolate, Kerrygold butter and Barry’s Tea.
Sometimes such foods are consumed in the immigrant community almost exclusively, but sometimes the host country absorbs the product and makes it one of it’s own. Chicken Tikka Masala has been named as Britain’s favourite dish, although some purists claim it’s actually a British invention virtually unknown on the Indian sub-continent.
The same kind of process is also seen in the world of drugs.
Khat or qat (a very useful word in scrabble, by the way) is a flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa and other countries surrounding the Red Sea. Chewing the freshly cut khat plant has been a social custom dating back thousands of years. It’s stimulant effects cause a sense excitement, a loss of appetite and euphoria. Some compare its effects to drinking extremely powerful coffee. Other writers, such as Charles Dickens, compared it to drinking strong green tea.
It has been estimated that up to 90% of adult males in Yemen chew khat for three to four hours every day. Travellers comment on how the whole country seems to come to a standstill at about 2pm (or ‘khat time’). Later work continues, as does the khat chewing. And it’s not only the men, around 50% for women and up to 20% of children under 12 use the drug on a daily basis. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that khat is not a "seriously addictive drug", it’s use does not come without problems.
With a driving fatality rate over 100 times that of most European countries people, Ethiopians generally try to avoid travelling at night. The truck drivers are likely to be tired and probably driving under the influence of khat. A report published in the WHO bulletin commented: “Traffic police officers regarded the practice of relying on khat to stay awake as especially dangerous because it leads to a misplaced sense of alertness. One officer told us that high levels of khat consumption cause hallucinations that can lead drivers to swerve to avoid imaginary objects.”
The cultivation of Khat also causes major problems. In Yemen it consumes much of the country's agricultural resources. Some 40% of the nation’s water supply goes towards irrigating it. An average user’s daily supply would require an estimated 500 litres of water to produce. Groundwater levels are not surprisingly diminishing as diesel powered pumps are used to extract the water from deep wells. Farmers also collect a far higher yield from growing khat all year round, making the planting of seasonal fruit or grain crops much less attractive.
An individual user may also suffer longer term health problems as it can lead to permanent tooth darkening, susceptibility to ulcers, and diminished sex drive. Some studies have linked khat use to depression, heart attacks, psychosis and oral cancers.
Khat is unusual as a drug in that it is used fresh due to the active ingredient (cathinone) decomposing within 48 hours. Harvesters package the fresh leaves in plastic bags or wrap them in banana leaves to preserve their moisture and then sprinkle them with water to keep the cathinone potent. Trucks race dangerously to the markets, often through warzones, to deliver the freshest khat to the marketplace.
An estimated 5 to 10 million people globally use khat on a daily basis and until 2014, some of them in Europe. With four flights a week from Kenya to Heathrow, khat used to be packed into the spaces left between the high-end vegetables being rushed to the supermarket shelves of London. Once customs were passed vans whisked the freshly delivered drug to Somali communities all over the UK. In London a bundle sold for £3, apparently less than a punnet of Marks & Spencer strawberries. Sporadic reports of khat appearing in Ireland were published, but it was usually when it was a form of tea made from dried khat. Such drinks had much lower levels of potency. In addition there were no flights into Dublin airport that could have used to smuggle the fresh drug in.
Concerns had been expressed over several years by health professionals and community members about the use of khat in the UK, particularly by immigrants from Somalia, Yemen and Ethiopia. As a result of these concerns, the UK government commissioned a series of research studies to look into the matter. They generally came to the conclusion that khat was not a major health concern. Some politicians also pointed out that a move to ban Khat could be interpreted as the government purposely focusing on particular immigrant groups, such as the Somali community and as such demonizing them.
Despite these concerns and the earlier reports, Khat was finally made illegal in the UK 2014. . Formerly priced at £3 a bundle the price soon rocketed ten-fold.
The appeal of khat in Europe rarely spread beyond the immigrant communities of East Africa. For khat’s close cousin the drug ‘mephedrone’ it was an entirely different matter. Mephedrone is a synthetic ‘designer drug’ that first began to appear in the year 2000. As one the first wave of ‘NPS’ (New Psychoactive Substances) it took several years before it came to more general public attention. By the end of the first decade of the new century it was by a long way the best-selling products of the ‘headshops’ that had sprung up in Ireland and elsewhere. These specialist shops sold what were known as ‘legal highs’, as none of the ingredients used in them were themselves illegal products. In mephedrone they had found a product that really appealed to the many partygoers of Ireland’s night-time economy. It was cheap and was perceived to have very few downsides. More importantly for the headshop owners a consignment of a kilogram of mephedrone from a chinese commercial laboratory only cost around 2,500 euros. Split into 10 euro deals the profit margin involved meant just one kg could nett over 7,000 euro in clear profit.
The cathinone compounds that can be found in the khat plant were synthesised from non-organic sources to produce a white powder that could be swallowed, snorted or injected. The stimulant and euphoric effects of the drug mimicked elements of ecstasy (MDMA), amphetamine and cocaine.
The press at the time created a form of moral panic with various lurid stories appearing in the media. One notorious story appeared in The Sun newspaper In late 2009. It claimed that a man had ripped his own scrotum off whilst using mephedrone. The story was later shown to have been built on an online ‘joke’ police report. The newspapers by then had begun referring to mephedrone as ‘miow miow’, a term that was unheard of on the streets. It’s thought that the link was made by journalists to the similar chemical structure found in khat, and hence the wordplay. It no doubt did no harm to newspaper sales.
Such reporting may have even increased sales of the new drug. It certainly seemed to have swayed the polititians who were desperate to appear “tough” on drugs. Whilst one is too many, the number of deaths where mephedrone was the direct cause numbered only three across all of Europe by then. The criminologist Fiona Measham commented that the reporting of the unconfirmed deaths by newspapers followed "the usual cycle of 'exaggeration, distortion, inaccuracy and sensationalism'" associated with the reporting of recreational drug use.
By the end 2010 it had been made illegal in most European states, including Ireland. The street trade in the drug soon took off soon afterwards, with increased prices and much lower purity levels becoming the norm. Although the headshops were largely closed down across Europe the drug continued to play a part in the stimulant drug market. Other replacement cathinones also began to appear as ‘legal highs’ and sold online until they too came to the attention on an increasingly more efficient system of drug detection and risk assessment spearheaded by the EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction), who then recommended national governments to swiftly update their drug laws.
The story of the drugs covered is yet another reminder that the complex illicit drugs market continues to evolve, with global trade and the movement of people across the world taking the market in new and often unexpected directions.
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Western Region Drug and Alcohol Task Force,
Unit 6, Galway Technology Park, Parkmore, Galway
Tel: 091 48 00 44 Email: info@wrdatf.ie
