"Addicts in the city center, faced with the climbing costs of heroin and benzodiazepines, suddenly switched to a drug they had never tried before: crystal meth. They call it Shisha, the same name the Turks use for the tobacco they smoke in Hookahs. Patsi said Eastern Europeans had introduced the drug to the streets. At five euros per fix, it cost half the price of heroin. “People were dying because they were shooting it and not smoking it, like they shoot heroin,” Patsi said. When the price went up, she added, they stopped using it. They also “got scared,” she said, when people started OD’ing.From all the narcotics which are trafficked, bought and sold on city streets, certainly this new drug is the the worst. Shisha is either inhaled or injected and can be produced in home laboratories.
Helena Smith's report in The Guardian on the rise of Shisha the "cocaine of the poor," in Greece places a spotlight on the horrid realities of austerity. The reports say that the addict who consumes it feels a burning sensation, becomes very aggressive and he or she totally loses control of all his senses. Sounds quite alarming and certainly dangerous, but try explaining this to someone who has a serious addiction, and who is attracted to this drug because it is cheap and very easy to find.
So much so, that some describe it to be the new drug of choice for thousands of homeless Greeks who over the last three years have been forced into poverty and despair because of a deep economic crisis.
This new synthetic drug is not just dangerous, it is also a health hazard. It contains methamphetamine, (battery acid, motor oil and even shampoo) and can literally send users into a state of senseless brutal violence. Depression couple with an excessive abuse of drugs and alcohol, has increased significantly over the last few years and let us not even analyze how high crime has skyrocketed.
"Its basic components are car battery liquids, bleach and a type of crystalline methamphetamine, making it extremely dangerous."Even more horrifying is the fact that it is easily obtainable, and certainly all those involved in the trafficking of narcotics are pushing it on the streets in order to rake in the big bucks. Some reports claim that many of the addicts who have already consumed it have committed atrocious crimes.
Young women are turning to prostitution because it is the easiest way to finance their addiction to Shisha, and according to some reports they are not even using protection (because the money is always more generous without a condom). This obviously puts them at a high risk of many sexual diseases one of which is the HIV epidemic. Also, once consumed the user does not think very clearly, and therefore many unwanted pregnancies are being recorded (with newborns who are born addicts).
"As reported by the Greek Monitoring Centre for Drugs ((EKTEPN), Shisha users smoke and, more often, shoot up the drug, which might be the reason for the 8 times higher HIV cases since 2011, as mentioned by the Head of Research Department of KETHEA."While Greece is probably the most extreme example of the devastation wrought by governments trying to cut their way out of recession, other nations have also faced similar public health problems brought on by the failure of neoliberal economics. For example, middle-aged American men, particularly those with poor economic prospects, have seen their suicide rates increase as they become alienated from the social fabric.
Recently, the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that for the period 1999-2010, the U.S. saw a 28.4 percent increase in suicide for all Americans aged 35-64 and as psychologist Bruce Levine points out, the cause for the increase was likely economic hardship.
All of this is eerily similar to the stories that came out of Russia and the other post-communist societies in the 1990s. As David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu argue in the The New York Times, those countries that adopted the "shock therapy" approach of economists such as Jeffrey D. Sachs and Lawrence H. Summers saw the health of their people decline as poverty exploded following the abrupt dismantling of the central planning system.
Stuckler and Basu also refer to other historical case studies of failed austerity. For example, during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Thailand and Indonesia adopted harsh austerity policies that caused mass hunger and death from infectious disease.
Sources
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/16/greek-addicts-sisha-drug-crisis
- http://www.thefix.com/content/greek-austerity-addiction-HIV-prostitution8605?page=all
- http://www.behance.net/gallery/Athens-2012-The-living-dead/6513335
- http://economicsisfordonkeys.blogspot.gr/2013/05/breaking-eggs-to-make-omelet.html
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