South Africans are changing their hard-drug habits, but the fallout from substance abuse remains the same: the destruction of lives, families and communities.

Heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine abuse have risen substantially in the past few years, while the use of once popular drugs, such as mandrax, has waned, according to a recent report by South Africa's Medical Research Council (MRC).

The findings have raised concern about the spread of HIV/AIDS through practices like needle sharing among drug users, and incidents of serious crime by users looking to bankroll their addiction.

A 2007 report by the United States (US) State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy listed 273 crime syndicates operating in South Africa, of which at least 132 were involved in illegal drug trading.

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a regional research organisation, noted in a 2002 report, 'Drugs and Crime in South Africa', that of the 2,859 people arrested over a two-year period in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town for serious crimes, including murder, attempted murder, rape and aggravated assault, 46 percent tested positive for at least one illegal substance.

"What this study does show is that drug use is common among people arrested for committing a wide range of crimes ... While we cannot say that most drug users are criminals, we can say that many criminals use drugs," said the ISS.

The most startling finding in the MRC's study was the steep increase in the use of crystal methamphetamine, known locally as 'tik', which is especially favoured in the Western Cape Province. Easy to manufacture, the drug produces the same 'high' and aggressive behaviour as crack cocaine but, unlike crack cocaine, which provides users with a relatively short 'high', the effects of tik can last three to four hours.

According to the MRC, in late 2003 only 5 percent of patients at drug rehabilitation clinics in the Western Cape cited tik as their drug of choice, but by late 2006 this had risen to 42 percent; in the under-20 age group the figure increased to 59 percent. The report found that the average age of drug abusers was 22, of whom the majority, 72 percent, were male.
Tik is known as 'speed' in the West. It was first used during the Second World War by Japanese Kamikaze pilots and has been prominent in the New York gay scene for a long time. It is taken in many other societies around the world, it is just called something else," said ISS organised crime expert Annette Huebschle.

The MRC discovered that the relationship between mental health and tik use also indicated societal reasons for tik's popularity in the Western Cape.

"Our initial findings seem to indicate that tik use in the Western Cape is most high where gangsterism is most engrained in the society. It appears that way of life has a negative psychological affect on the greater community that leaves them susceptible to its lure. The communities tend to have a depressed mood and some use tik to alleviate it," said senior MRC scientist Andreas Pluddemann.

"These gangs are the most organised of all the country's, and they control the tik trade. They deal predominately in their own backyard and to their own ethnic group [mixed race], which explains why you don't see much tik abuse anywhere else," he commented.

Tik is replacing mandrax, a synthetic drug containing the active ingredient methaqualone, the main hard drug of choice in the Western Cape in the 1980s and 1990s, which was also distributed in drug networks controlled by gangs.

Drug apartheid
The MRC report found the use of heroin and cocaine had risen significantly in the provinces of Gauteng, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, with a surge in cocaine use among the white population, especially in the Eastern Cape, where 28 percent of whites in rehabilitation clinics cite it as their drug of choice, compared to 11 percent or less in South Africa's six other provinces.

During the apartheid era, the choice of substances abused often occurred mainly in a particular ethnic group, except in the case of alcohol, which was abused by all races.

With the advent of democracy in 1994, "where you have mixed communities you now see drug abuse crossing the ethnic divide," Pluddemann said, although the use of tik among the mixed race 'coloured' community in the Western Cape remains one example of a predominant drug use practiced by a specific ethnic community, although there are others.

Communities in the port city of Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal Province on South Africa's east coast, are grappling with the abuse of a drug known as 'sugars', first noticed in 2002 by MRC researchers, who obtain data from drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres around the country.

Sugars is a highly addictive mixture of cocaine and heroin of such low purity that it is often mixed with rat poison to assist it in passing into the bloodstream. Its abuse has been concentrated among the Indian population, while having little impact on the city's African and white communities.

Users inhale the substance by a process known as 'chasing the dragon', in which the drug is smeared onto aluminium foil and heated, and the user inhales the vapour.

Sam Pillay, chairman of the Anti-Drug Forum, has witnessed how sugars has embedded itself in the fabric of the city's Indian communities and over the past two years the forum has assisted more than 5,000 addicts.

"It [sugars abuse] started in Durban in the city centre amongst the taxi drivers a couple of years ago. They then spread it to the townships of Chatsworth and Phoenix, where it is causing untold damage to the individual users and their families; the abuse has changed these neighbourhoods," he said.

"Crime is going through the roof because abusers steal anything they can to pay for their next hit. Gang wars have taken off - there have been four gang-related killings in the last few months - and there appears to be no end in sight," he said.

Trade routes
After 1994, the country's subsequent reintegration into international trade also saw the rise of drug trafficking in South Africa, both as a destination and a channel to other countries. "These trade routes have exposed people to a wide variety of illegal substances that otherwise would be in short supply," the ISS's Huebschle said.

The rise in South Africa's drug abuse has mirrored its economic growth and higher levels of disposable income, which have lead to a doubling of the numbers of people seeking help from clinics for drug addiction in the last decade, according to the MRC.

In 2006 the South African Police Service raided 52 illegal drug laboratories and in the 12 months up to March 2006 reportedly confiscated 46kg of methaqualone, 295kg of cocaine, 17kg of heroin and 958kg of amphetamine-type stimulants, such as tik.

While coloured gangs are believed to produce and control tik, Huebschle says the Triads - the Chinese mafia - are the main suppliers of the ingredients that go into its production, and many of these ingredients are legal in their original form.

With that in mind, Huebschle said greater international cooperation was essential if the authorities were ever going to make significant inroads into the illegal drug trade.

"There needs to be more cross-border cooperation between all the police forces in Africa and further afield, so the international crime syndicates and their trade routes can be tracked," she said. "There is some cooperation, but not enough to give the major players any cause for concern."