“Since the introduction in the 80s of the low quality heroine, known as brown sugar into Mauritius, there has not been even a single half day shortage of that drug on the market”, says Ally Lazer, anti-drug campaigner and social worker involved in the rehabilitation of drug abusers. Behind his thick sunglasses and his long history of levelling accusations and drafting different lists of drug dealers, Ally Lazer may be losing his lustre and credibility.

Lyndsay Morvan of the National agency for the treatment and rehabilitation of substance abusers (Natresa) however shares his view on the readiness with which drug addicts have been getting their three daily doses regularly over the past 25 years. He says that, as far as he knows, there have never been any shortages in this sector. “When there is a crack down in a particular region with strict police surveillance, addicts turn to another region and get their doses.”

A study carried out by his organization with the help of the United Nations Drug and Crime Office puts the number of injecting drug users at 17 138. Social workers are now desperate about the level of hard drug consumption in the island, especially among young people. Mauritius ranks first among African countries as far as heroine consumption is concerned, says a United Nations report.

Brown sugar, imported from India, was sold at Rs 10 a dose in the 80s, recalls Angele who has squandered twenty years of her life in drug abuse. She has managed to get off the hook. Talking to l’express, this drug addict says: “All the prostitutes, young or old you see in Jardin de la Compagnie are there because of drugs. They sell themselves each day for drugs and I could still have been one of them if I had not made a Herculean effort seven years ago to get out of that hell which appeared to be paradise to me when I first started shooting brown sugar into my veins”.

<B>Paradise leading to hell</B>

Angel, who comes from an uneducated working-class family, says she would have known a bright career had she not been hooked on drugs at an early age.

She did well at her primary school and won the Docks scholarship to enter Bon et Perpétuel Secours (BPS) college. Her father, a docker, was very strict. Angel and her two sisters were respected in their neighbourhood and seen as the few who would make it through to a better future. Her two sisters are now well-off teachers.

But Angel, the most promising of the three daughters, met another destiny called brown sugar. She was to fall lower than anyone expected and now lives in utter poverty and squalor with a three-year old daughter. “I make it a duty to tell all youngsters not to touch drugs, especially during parties. They say drugs are cool. But once you take them, it may be paradise, but this paradise leads to hell”.

And she describes the hell she has so often gone through: “You get stomach cramps; you shudder with cold and the next minute you are sweating and your body is on fire; you vomit and get diarrhoea; enter into violent fits and you cannot swallow a single spoonful of food. Drug users call it the drug sickness for which there is only one cure. An injection of brown sugar and you are back to life, but only for a few hours. Hell then breaks loose if you do not have another dose readily available. But another dose means money and money means prostitution, larceny with violence, housebreaking, pick-pocketing. Anything that might bring you a dose. A never-ending cycle in which I have lost twenty years of my life”.

Angel, an attractive girl at 20 is now a human wreck. She has been the mistress of two drug dealers and known luxury living. Looking back on her life and a dust-covered photo of her depicting her past splendour, she finds it hard not to cry. Angel has no photo of Anthony, the father of her child. She says he is no longer a man. He is only a drug addict.

“I think he cannot reconcile himself with the idea that he squandered in drugs the huge sum he obtained as compensation from the docks. His life is now nothing but misery. I still love him, but neither my love nor my compassion, not even his son, the fruit of our love, can pull him out of his hell. When he gets out, he will go back to larceny sprees to pay for his three doses per day, that is around Rs 750 daily”, says Angele.

The street price of drugs is confirmed by Jabir, 22, who has recently gone for detoxification. “I used to spend Rs 75 000 per month on drugs when I was an addict”. Jabir comes from a well-off family and is now striving to get off the hook with the help of the Centre de Solidarité of Solitude where he will be confined for six months for treatment.

<B>1,8 tons of “brown sugar” each year</B>

Government is spending Rs 11 million yearly on drug addicts. Around 1 200 addicts undergo detoxification and around half of them relapse and fuel drug traffickers with big money.

According to figures worked out by l’express from the Natresa report, the 17 138 brown sugar addicts use 51 000 doses per day. This represents a daily sale of Rs 12,7 million at Rs 250 per dose. The shocking fact is that 1,8 tons of brown sugar enter the country each year. Thus the record catch in November 2001 of 15 kg of brown sugar on the premises of Yousouf Elias Hajee Sheriff, alias Isoop Tole, is peanuts compared to the amount passing through the nets yearly.