Algeria: 300,000 youths use drugs

  1. Posted on Monday 27 December 2010 - 11:30
    KingsleyKobo
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    Kingsley Kobo, AfricaNews reporter in Abidjan, Ivory Coast
    About 300, 000 youths aged between 12 and 35 in Algeria use drugs, the director general of Algeria’s National Fight against Drugs and Drug Addiction (ONCLDT) has said.
    Algeria: 300,000 youths use drugs
    At a conference on “The Economy and Social Effects of Drugs” held recently in the Algerian capital Algiers, the ONCLDT director, Abdelmalek Sayeh, revealed the above figures realised by the national survey on drug in the country.

    Sayeh said 5% of consumers were female and 95% male, noting that the trend was spreading from the cities into rural areas and even to the southern regions of Algeria.

    “Beside its negative effects on university campuses, drugs are a factor of rising crime, violence in stadiums, road and industrial accidents in Algeria,” Sayeh said.
    Algeria had 35.6 million inhabitants in January 2010; over 28% were under 15, according to the National Statistics Office (NSO).

    From a transit country, Algeria has become in recent years, a consumer of drugs especially cannabis and psychotropic substances.

    More than eleven tons of cannabis were seized during the first quarter of 2010 in Algeria by the services of the fight against drug trafficking.

    In 2009, over 74 tons of cannabis were seized in Algeria against 38 tons in 2008, according to ONLCDT.

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