By Adadainfo
Brig Gen Mohammed Marwa (retd), the chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, says Nigeria currently ranks first among the cannabis-using countries globally, even ahead of South-American countries.
According to him, 10.6 million Nigerians ‘actively’ abuse the drug in the country.
Gen Marwa spoke at the second edition of Vanguard Mental Health Summit on Thursday, November 24.
He lamented Nigeria’s rising abuses of the drug, adding that its level of abuse was not ascertained up until the 2018 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime-supported National Survey on Drug Use and Health was conducted.
In his words, “Before then, the drug use profile of Nigeria was sketchy. The survey gave us facts for the first time. We got to know that Nigeria, as of 2018, had a 14.4 percent drug use prevalence.
“That was an eye-opener. The statistics may not mean much at face value, only by comparison will the danger become glaring.
“The average global drug use prevalence was 5.5 percent, at 14.4 percent. Nigeria has almost three times the global prevalence. Without any doubt, the country has a serious substance abuse problem.
“Secondly, the survey gave us an idea about the pattern of abuse vis-a-vis prevalence and substance type in various regions of the country.
“The biggest revelation was that 10.6 million Nigerians abused cannabis. Again, this is a mere figure until you begin to figure it out in terms of the human impact. The ramification is that we have a cannabis-using population that is bigger than countries like Portugal and the United Arab Emirates.”
