The political economy of heroin and crack cocaine in Tanzania

Intimate crimes: heroin and the rise of amaphara in South Africa

“…Users I spoke with said that the practice of injecting heroin is rare in Durban, whereas in East Africa this method of ingestion is common (see Beckerleg & Hundt 2004; McCurdy et al . 2005, McCurdy & Kaduri 2016). Deaths through overdoses in Durban are uncommon, because the drug is heavily cut with mixing agents, usually smoked and not injected, and dealers have not (as yet) mixed it with strong synthetic opioids such as fentanyl (the cause of tens of thousands of deaths in North America).…”

“…What drove cheap heroin's rapid uptake in the 2000s, and especially the 2010s, was the drug's increased entry into the country as part of a ‘southern route’ of smuggling from Afghanistan via East and southern Africa to Europe and the USA (on the use of heroin from the 1980s in Tanzania see McCurdy et al 2005; McCurdy 2014; McCurdy & Kaduri 2016; and Kenya see Beckerleg & Hundt 2004). These trade routes were aided because African economies opened up as part of World Bank and IMF-sponsored ‘structural adjustment’ programmes and South Africa, the region's largest economy, ended its economic isolation after 1994.…”

“…Thus, as many scholars have noted, drug dependence works through and intensifies existing social inequalities (Agar & Reisinger 2002; Bourgois 2003; Beckerleg & Hundt 2004; Bourgois & Schonberg 2009; McCurdy 2014; McCurdy & Kaduri 2016). More than half of the heroin users we interviewed started smoking the drug while attending local schools that are poorly funded compared with suburban schools, especially former white schools.…”