Once A Stop On The Smuggling Route, Kenya Becomes Heroin Hub

Nairobi, May 6 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 6th May, 2021 ) :Esther Wanjiru started using heroin at 16 to dull the pain after her baby died, first smoking, and now injecting the opioid which has become increasingly cheap and abundant in Kenya.

"I am a heavy junkie, I usually need two doses," said Wanjiru, 22, as she puts the needle to a damaged vein, surrounded by about 60 other addicts in a clearing behind a church in a Nairobi slum.

Once just a passing stop on the trafficking route to Europe, Kenya is becoming a major destination in itself for heroin, with addiction rising as tonnes of powder pass through East Africa.

These days a hit costs as little as 120 shillings (USD$1.

10/0.90 Euros), creating a devastating path to dependence for poor, troubled Kenyans like Wanjiru.

Wanjiru says she will do anything -- even crime or prostitution -- to get hold of the drug.

Heroin once reached Europe via the "Balkan Route": smuggled from the poppy fields of Afghanistan overland through the middle East to capitals in the west.

But the Syrian conflict and border controls that tightened as waves of migrants sought refuge in Europe forced traffickers to change tack.

They turned to the sea to get around the problem. Heroin was put on ships and sailed across the Indian Ocean to the porous eastern coast of Africa, and muled northward to Europe.