Use of crystal meth among young people is also a big problem in Cambodia right now. No jobs and no future.

'We forget our troubles': crystal meth use rises during lockdown in Zimbabwe
Harare’s drug dealers say business is booming as more young people, some at school, use mutoriro
Nyasha Chingono in Harare
Tue 16 Mar 2021 09.00 GMT

Inside a tiny room in Kuwadzana, a township in Harare, Solomon Sigauke* and his friends talk animatedly about football and listen to loud music. The misty vapour from the crystal meth fills the room as they take turns on a fluorescent pipe.

Sigauke, 25, has no cigarette lighter so he is improvises, holding a burning candle while his friend Kudzo puffs the smoke from the burning substance, known locally as mutoriro. .

It is 7pm in Kuwadzana, about nine miles from Harare’s central business district, where many youths have ventured into illicit and dangerous drugs such as mutoriro, with the numbers rising as the lockdown cut them off from jobs and their usual social lives.

Known scientifically as methamphetamine, crystal meth is a highly addictive stimulant used for its powerful euphoric effects.

Sigauke demonstrates the process of decrystallising the white chemical into a brown smoking smear. The curved pipe is made from fluorescent tubesfrom disused energy-saver lightbulbs that are cleaned and sold to drug users for $1.

As he exhales a cloud of the toxic smoke, his friends burst out laughing at Sigauke’s drooling face. “You should be careful not to ingest the smoke because it causes stomach-ache,” Sigauke explains.

Although the drug has been used in Zimbabwe for some years, its use has grown in the townships as the economic crisis grips the country, leaving few job prospects for its young people. Zimbabwe has nearly 90% unemployment, with young people worst affected.

“This drug will just make you get into another zone altogether; we can spend the whole night talking and enjoying ourselves. We live in a world of our own and can even forget about our daily troubles,” Sigauke says.

He adds that as schools have closed because of the Covid pandemic, teenagers are now joining their ranks.

“These days you find little girls taking the substance. Most of them are coming here to smoke this thing. At 1am, you will find most kids flooding the streets smoking meth – it’s like you are watching a movie. These children have become wild,” Sigauke says.

A gram of crystal meth costs $12 – a steep cost for most users in the townships and equivalent to a week’s rent on a room in a township. The drug-pushers have taken advantage of the use of foreign currency as legal tender in the country to milk the drug-thirsty market. One supplier explains that crystal meth is smuggled into the country through Zimbabwe’s porous borders with South Africa.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... e-lockdown