Illegal Drug Sale : The Hydra Refusing To Die

The battle against the sale of roadside medications in Cameroon is like a bone stuck in the throat of an individual. Efforts to swallow the bone or cough it out have been futile. This best describes the difficulties faced by authorities to eradicate the sale of roadside drugs. In spite of several actions against roadside medications, in almost every nook and cranny of the country, there is a shop or makeshift stand for such medications. Curbing the sale of such medications has not been easy over the years. The porous nature of the country’s borders, compounded by the complicity of the population has created a major resistance in efforts made to end the sale of roadside drugs.

Complicity of Buyers
Speaking to Cameroon Tribune, many people in the market admitted that they approach street vendors because they sell medicines cheaper than pharmacies. Poverty does not allow an average Cameroonian to buy medicine from pharmacies; Marus K explained, adding that some patients, who are unable to afford the high prices and prescriptions required in pharmacies, opt for roadside medication even when they know it is of doubtful quality. It is also revealed that vendors of roadside medications can retail medicines at the cheapest rate suitable for the buyer. Because vendors of roadside medications greatly serve customers, they have gained loyalty from them each time the forces of law and order come around to apprehend such goods. According to an inhabitant in Yaounde, “each time police officers come around to seize such medications or ransack sales outlets, I never tell them the truth about those involved in the business.” 

Porous Borders 
Information indicates that makeshift sales points and roadside dealers of medications are thriving via a black market of smuggled drugs. The drugs, authorities say, are smuggled into the country mainly from neighbouring countries.  Most of the drugs are being removed from their original packaging and hidden in biscuit packs to evade control. Among the popular smuggled drugs are Tramadol, Diclofenac and Chlorphenamine. However, on several occasions in the last two years, heavy-duty trucks and mini-vans have been intercepted and found with huge shipments of medications, particularly in Garoua, in the North Region. But the illegal sale of drugs seems unabated in spite of several counter campaigns. According to the government, this illegal activity is worth more than 25 per cent of the national drug market. The statistics point to a national crisis in which Cameroon, every year, loses billions of francs worth of potential revenue from illegal drugs imp...