A couple anya we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on the no 20. West africa is battling an opioid abuse trust medicine such as tramadol legally prescribed by doctors for pain relief but taken into life threatening texts by millions in search of fakes already strong offer to treat people in power has been to nigeria to investigate one of the drug smuggling trade and abused widespread corruption to follow since it was trafficking and the appalling Health Consequences for those in its grip. Ringback are you going to stay in the midst of the worst drug addiction f m e and its barely a week goes by without Spring International reports like these documents in americas opioid crisis. The u. S. Is not the only country facing such a predicament really. Lagos nigeria is africas largest city in the country with the biggest population on the continent over 200000000 people. The city is overcrowded polluted and poverty stricken. And adding to its woes its suffering its own widescale and growing opioid addiction epidemic. I was the reason i didnt listen to this if you 2 need to take time i dont feel like 11 years tramadol a life saving opioid painkiller is also being abused on a massive scale by all sectors of society a little too cool for for. This regulates of the other hope you would painkillers like. A drug which has been implicated in more than 400000 deaths in the us since 2000 tramadol is less dangerous than oxycodone its no less addictive according to a new study by the mayo clinic a prestigious Us Medical Center the key findings our study which was looking at the effect of tramadol on long term dependence in patients from acute sort of pain was the patients who received tramadol actually to our surprise i did not have lower rates of long term opioid use but actually had slightly higher rates of going on to long term opioid use tramadol is currently a schedule for opioid versus other opioids like oxy caught on or schedule 2 meaning that the government considers those at higher risk of abuse and long term dependence we found is in fact really terminal is not actually any lower Interest Rate of abuse or long term dependence the epidemic isnt just confined to lagos its infected the into. Country. The united nations. Released the results of nigeria. What we found is really of grave concern when were talking. Almost 5000000 users over the past 12 months and the tendency appears to be rising poverty unemployment desperation of people and their living situations is one of the drivers a lot of people seem to be using it associated with hard manual labor with sex work. Eases her ability to submit to a clients more extreme demands she calls the drug street name. Meaning. 50. 50. And most other abuses legal and highly dangerous version of the drug legally produced. 50 or 100. Tap that is being used widely for pain therapy it is really for a large part of the population the only pain medication. When were talking about abuse great. Were talking about. Significantly over a. 100 milligram what we have seen in seizures up to 225 milligrams and what we have heard in the reports of. People mentioned even up to 400 to 500 taps. We had. From a stable middle class family and works as a chef. Ground. In the ground. To. Be each pull cost 300. 00. A pull thats more than double the strength of legally available. To much of. My friends the. Abuse of. The. Drugs so where does this abuse come from that is being produced both legally as well as that is produced specifically for the nonmedical use is being produced in. Officially. Tories it is reaching nigeria primarily by sea its entering through 2 major ports of lagos. This begs the question. Of nigeria. Widely distributed across the country. To interview the lagos drug dealer he agreed to be filmed as we didnt show his face. His business consists of a. In a suitcase full of with legal drugs. The tramadol he keeps out of sight im not counting terminal in sandy hook and just having to time i dont know but sometimes a pocket determined. Most of his clients are young men. When he moves because. Now just guys we. Also sells to women. Bank town down the phone and then. When the waiting staff were told we were to do cool foods to meet im selling time other lessons to towns thats run turn the week a significant amount for a street below where we wanted to know does he get them from these people became us and us i mean come on talks to us in secret in did not go down time and go to huntington 9 clear at this point he became wary and wouldnt tell us anything more about a supplier as we put this question to you n. R. D. C. We need to be very honest we know relatively little about the criminal networks being involved how well theyre organized how large they are. Theres about 7 or 8 different nationalities that ive been identified the other issue that suggests a certain level of sophistication is to mere size of the individual seizures some of these seizures allegedly are reaching several tons dozens of talls which really suggests like a relatively sophisticated process. To find out more about such seizures we arranged a visit to a pop nigerias largest and busiest ports. In 2018 customs and other authorities seized 41 containers of illegal tramadol here. Its goal to buy an armed convoy of cars. Drug Law Enforcement officials thats what they came to show us today. This. Is from. 2800 seizures were a coup for the authorities the largest single seizure involved 33 containers filled with tramadol they claimed 198000000000. Thats over 550000000. 00 u. S. Dollars. With such massive sums of money involved we want to know how many perpetrators had been brought to book. People who have imported. The. I can do speak for this time. The. Investigation is going on on once is concluded prosecuted. But in the past there have been other importers coming here what is one of. The National Drug agency or india later told us that in the last 2 years only 5 people have been charged in relation to the apapa port seizures the prosecution is the still in process and to date no ones been convicted. We asked the commander about allegations of corruption at the port. Is not an issue because he walked in the air for like yes i dont think this issue. But the events which unfolded soon after seemed to indicate otherwise we phoned the customs official handing off a box of try. To a port worker. Then we captured boxes of the drug being thrown over the fanes. Finally as we were leaving the paperwork was arrested going to literally for stealing tramadol we tried to film that. Statement. Out of the words. My you tell me of the. Amount. Of the body. You. Know the. Customs did take it seriously foaming that is we were detained and pressured to delete our footage of the arrest. In the end though they let us go and officials later confirmed that the arista poor work i had stolen the tramadol. The ports of lagos are just the start of the problem next we travel to my degree in the north east of nigeria the city was once the headquarters of. The Islamic State franchise terrorizing this part of the country since 2009. Group which has been fighting a jury and military forces attacking schools and declaring an Islamic State in territory it controls since then through attacks and suicide bombings that killed an estimated 27000 people over 2000000 civilians have been displaced. Weve heard disturbing reports the tramadol might be playing a role in the insurgency. To understand how the conflict is affecting civilians here we interview a psychiatrist at my degrees federal neuropsychiatric hospital. I many patients although he shows us around a rehab. Isnt it its almost empty but that isnt for lack of those needing treatment. Sent. The source of livelihood of. Treatment also since the insurrection began hes seen previously unthinkably high dosages of tramadol come on to the market we have. 625. Individuals to 10. 20 shocking indeed that service 60 times the maximum legal dosage. One of those who cant afford treatment is above my. Comment than if i didnt i won a number of items of which were the. Same question and she has them all right aiki. That was 4 years ago. Theres another thats going to have over a 100 more tons of the minus with. Me the other day that he does not view as a cause of death and i was worse than that i dont know if this is a god i had no idea. At the time of his brothers death of a druggie flayed his village. He now lives in a camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts my degree. Lead us over the ruins in the serenity garment. When they were going to. Get it down always. Believed to do we were no one any one no one is the anyone no one he dont look at any about it to go into go into god he has anybody its not as he already did i mean intended to question one and see the region if i have or not moments when i shall but as im going to academia. In other indicating i say how i dont know in the n. B. A. She hasnt yet. And its not just civilians are taking. Also came here to investigate suspicions that the drug is fueling the insurgency itself. For security reasons we could only interview. Like many of these arrested fighters he was forced to join the movement when he was in his teens. He was in the movement for 4 years before escaping. Now he lives in a refugee camp outside my degree. And. Put them to work because. The drug enabled them to carry out these arduous 24 missions it was also used to groom them for what was to come. So you know. We dont want to do that that. You know. Hes led the group to become even more violent committing a text suicide bombings and most infamously the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from chibok village 2014. By the book issue and youre listening. To. The tramadol also helped to be deeply traumatic memory. Now much. More than i think. Shes. Actually. Youre going to. Have i say. Yes no doubt that the drug is essential to sustaining insurgency but i want to. Focus. On this. Dont. Go. Finally we travel westwards to. Jerrys 2nd largest city. Its got one of the highest poverty rates the country and also some of its worst tramadol abuse. At the mean a teaching hospital. Of legally prescribed tramadol and the dangers of the illegal street version can be seen in one location. This morning. With the patients and. The psychiatric ward is struggling to cope with the fallout from the abuse grade version 44. 50 to 60 percent of our clients. Use. Due to the lack of resources drug users share the same ward with psychiatric patients we handle those are all. Which takes a short period of time and then we have to undo the psychological dependence. And it takes a long time even after you need to be quite a long time patient. But the flip side of the tramadol is this over regulating it would have disastrous results in a general ward we visit a patient for whom trammels an essential pain treatment. Suffers from Sickle Cell Disease a blood disorder which causes acute pain and stunts growth although he looks much younger hes actually 18. 2018 the Nigerian Government in an effort to clamp down on the beauty of coding. Banned them extensively some doctors and experts are concerned that the authorities might result to similar tactics. If you buy drugs. Because. They need the drug so if. We visit the local commander. In the city they tell us they slowly winning the war against illegal trying. To illustrate they doing to show us what used to be. The prison is relocated to make room for. Not only is it being sold nigeria but its being trafficked to neighboring countries to come from. Since. This is. This instance. Was. Passed. To. The forefront its something thats. All this tramadol they tell us mr stern for destruction of the jail full of it is just a drop in the ocean the country still drowning in the drug. Next we join in india a drug raid. Looking and acting very much like the americans you train them they take to the streets in an armored convoy. In a display of force they travel through kano shunting traffic on the roads there is no you right here they disembark to read a large local market. Heavy handed operation probably put on for our benefit produces few results they arrest a young man wearing a cannabis t. Shirt. Its unclear if you even has any cannabis on him nevertheless hes bundled onto an india a truck which is fast filling up with other young men from the market. Nigeria has a 55 percent youth Unemployment Rate and it also has the highest number of People Living in extreme poverty in the world even more than india so men like these sometimes turn to drug dealing out of necessity. Its not 6 in the right breaths up but can i jerry is war against illegal tramadol really be one with guns without addressing the underlying causes of poverty unemployment and inequality that seems highly unlikely. A city defined by military occupation theres never been an arab state here with the capital of jerusalem everyone is welcome but this default structure that maintains the can only project thats what we refuse it was one of the sound of us of a settlement with this and the story of jerusalem through the eyes of its own people segregation occupation discrimination injustice this is apartheid in the 21st century jerusalem a rock and a hard place on aljazeera. Capturing a moment in time. Snapshots of other lives. Other stories. Provided clips into someone elses work out yet is. Do day for. Inspiring documentaries from impassioned filmmakers. Like witness on aljazeera day one of a new era in Television News we badly need at this moment leadership and felt this encampment that were in today it didnt exist 3 weeks ago now theres at least 20000 or hinder refugees who live here on aljazeera i got to commend you all more im hearing is Good Journalism presenters the public has resigned after all the lawyers the attempts of cover ups Jamal Khashoggi his loved ones want some form of closure people are suffering people are dying entire School Systems are collapsing we are in the beginning of a mass extinction we saw the syrian army like wasted in the city has been recorded. Its a good cinema song that was about a 100 meters away from the frontline but its. Up in the up and out quickly. This is al jazeera. Hello im daryn jordan this is the aljazeera news hour live from doha coming up in the next 60 minutes tens of thousands of people fleeing over in syria as government jets continue bombarding the rebel held in the province. 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