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Photo: Visual/Photos
Some down pills with coffee
Photo: Visual/Photos
Pills smuggled through Gaza tunnels
Photo: AP

Gazans increasingly rely on painkiller

More and more Strip residents – especially young men – use tramadol to forget daily troubles. With smuggling on the rise, black market price set at 50 cents per pill, health officials are concerned

The new drug overtaking the Gaza Strip doesn't stimulate hallucinations or boost endurance at the dance club. It merely chills you out, which is exactly what many Gazans say they need.

 

Ruled by Islamic hard-liners from Hamas and locked in by Israel, Gazans can't travel outside the strip, have few places to go for fun and are faced with a failing economy. Thus the boom in the popularity of tramadol, a painkiller known here by a common brand name, "Tramal."

 

Growing numbers of Gazans have begun using the drug over the past year and a half to take the edge off life in the impoverished seaside strip, pharmacists and residents say.

  

This worries medical personnel, who say the drug can cause dependence. It is a prescription drug in many countries, and the Hamas-run Health Ministry has made efforts to control it, but without much success in a society where medicines available only by prescription elsewhere are often sold over the counter.

 

Tramadol is especially popular among young men. Some down the pills with coffee or dissolve them in tea. Others pop them freely when hanging out with friends. Grooms have been seen passing them out at weddings.

 

"You feel calmness through your whole body, absolute quiet," said one regular user, 27-year-old Bassem, in describing the drug's effect. He, like others interviewed by The Associated Press for this story, refused to give his last name for fear of being arrested as a drug user.

 

Tramadol is an opioid pain killer, related to morphine and heroin, though much milder, said Marta Weinstock, professor of pharmacology at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. Users who stop after taking it regularly could get flu-like withdrawal symptoms, she said, though other long-term negative effects are rare.

 

Also available on streets

Dyaa Saymah, mental health officer with the World Health Organization in Gaza, said the drug's popularity has been encouraged by its availability, since large quantities have been smuggled through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

 

"Tramadol has spread widely and very fast because, unfortunately, it is available over the counter in pharmacies, but it's also available in the streets," Saymah said. "You can get it easily on the black market."

 

The booming black market sales also have sent prices down to as little as one shekel (26 US cents) a pill, the cost of two cigarettes.

 

No statistics exist on how many Gazans take the drug. Mazen el-Sakka of the Drug Abuse Research Center in Gaza estimates that up to 30 percent of men between 14 and 30 take it regularly. Fewer women take it for fear of being seen as promiscuous.

 

"We're talking about a huge slice of the population, a big group of the youth and others who are using this drug," said Health Ministry spokesman Hammam Nasman.

  

Hamas's seizure of Gaza in June 2007 - ousting forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - increased the drug's popularity, since living conditions plummeted as Israel and the international community isolated Gaza.

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.14.08, 11:01
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