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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Kenya can't afford to accept bias against Khat
    #5632000 - 05/15/06 10:49 AM (17 years, 8 months ago)

Kenya can't afford to accept bias against Khat
By Paul Goldsmith
May 15, 2006 - The East African

It was widely reported in the press earlier this year that the government of the United Kingdom was considering banning miraa or khat, (catha edulis), pending the report of a commission established to investigate its use.

Because London is the key international hub for the legal and illicit export of miraa to other destinations, the ban threatens the estimated $350 million a year Kenya now earns from its export.

No Kenyan institution offered any input, defense, or clarification of issues bedevilling the botanical stimulant.

Going by the commission's report, Khat : Assessment of Risk to the Individual and Communities in the UK, the verdict issued by the Home Office turned out to be a near miss. Although it recommended that miraa use be discouraged, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs concluded that: "On the basis of the evidence, the Council recommends that khat is not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Use of the substance is very limited to specific communities within the UK, and has not, nor does it appear likely to spread to the wider community."

IF THE miraa sector is out of jail for the time being, the prospect of a ban on exports will remain as long as the botanical stimulant remains contentious outside areas where it is traditionally consumed. Several European nations did ban miraa in the 1990s; the US government is likely to keep up the pressure on other Western states to follow suit. One would think this situation would prompt players with a stake in the growing trade – including governments – to develop a policy framework governing the agro-industry and consumption, but the likelihood of pro-active measures is low.

The casual attitude prevailing in Meru – the miraa growing centre in eastern Kenya – is partially because of the Merus' knowledge of miraa's properties and long-term effects based on generations of social learning and partly on their experience in the modern marketplace: that the government of Kenya apparently has other fish to fry.

Chewing khat is a social institution predating domestication of coffee in pockets of Africa and Arabia, and communities where the botanical stimulant is traditionally consumed have developed effective mechanisms of regulation and control. The dangers highlighted in clinical studies of catha edulis do not exactly tally with the local knowledge reflecting generations of social learning.

GROWERS IN the crop's Nyambene heartland consequently dismiss threats to their economic flagship by stating, "miraa haipingiki" (miraa is unstoppable). When the government considered banning miraa in the late 1960s, a delegation of Meru elders visited President Jomo Kenyatta, presented him with a bouquet of mbaine – the high quality miraa, harvested from century-old trees – and explained that "miraa feeds us, clothes us, and pays our children’s school fees."

Kenyatta, always the pragmatist, knew that forcing some 200,000 Meru growers to abandon their trees –some of which are family heirlooms and cross-generational investments over 300 years old – would have been problematic. He assured them that no adverse action would be taken. At the time, miraa was still just one, albeit an increasingly important, component in the Nyambene agricultural economy whose market value only passed that of food crops in the early 1970s. The area under cultivation is now considerably larger and spreading to coffee-producing zones outside the Nyambene hills and beyond.

The Meru have always shared their genetic resources and knowledge – a strategy comparable to Bill Gates deciding to distribute free his MS DOS operating system. A small but steady stream of farmers visit the Nyambenes in search of root cuttings; and some large coffee and teas estates are quietly establishing pilot plantations. Factors of quality and quantity limit the marketability of non-Meru miraa, but when the post El Nino drought shrank commercial supply, Somali traders ferreted out new sources in unlikely places like West Pokot – and brought in Meru experts to help locals improve their crops.

SOME miraa traders I recently talked to appeared only vaguely aware of the UK commission studying the miraa question; sellers in Ethiopia I queried seemed even less aware of the potential ban. But when pressed about their response if the UK did ban miraa imports, two Meru dealers were quick to assert that they will find new markets: when asked where, they shot back, "in China and other Asian nations."

While Nyambene’s miraa producers are regarded as hillbillies by their neighbours, this response suggests that the "haipingiki" thesis conceals a more nuanced reading of international developments than their coffee-growing counterparts reading of that crop’s problems.

Coffee was crowned "the drug of the 1990s" in the West. It is chic – ever notice how the celebrities and sports stars featured on Cribs show off their high-tech coffee makers when the tour passes through the kitchen? Entrepreneurs abroad cashed in on the resurgent popularity of the beverage, especially for high quality connoisseur coffees (like Kenya’s). For Kenya’s small-scale producers, in contrast, coffee is an economic roller-coaster – even after liberalisation, institutional reforms, and several years of relatively buoyant world prices.

While not as fashionable, yet, the number of growers on the eastern slopes of Mount Kenya planting miraa and abandoning coffee is snowballing. The expansion of khat in Ethiopia is even greater, and the rising value of exports may soon overtake that of the country’s coffee exports.

Even if the demand side of the equation is uncertain for the foreseeable future, a decision made abroad that placed overseas hubs and distribution points for exports off limits would still have far reaching economic, social, and political ramifications across the region. Threats to the "tree of paradise" are a reoccurring subject of discussion where it is chewed, given the economic implosion that would follow an export ban.

IT SHOULD be noted that this scenario and trends in producing regions abroad, were not the concern of the report, Khat :Assessment of Risk to the Individual and Communities in the UK. The study draws on a wide range of research but does not stray from the title’s domestic focus. The document cites data from a wide range of studies, and proceeds to interpret findings with a scientific rigour that exposes how some of the studies disregard basic methodological conventions of sampling and the relationship between cause and effect.

For example: the review follows up negative observations about the mental health of UK users and subjects drawn from war-torn Somalia by quoting from a comparable study in Yemen ,whose findings were based on standardised measures of mental health: "–There was no association with use and psychiatric symptoms as measured by the rating scale Symptoms Checklist-90. In fact, use of khat appears to be inversely associated with phobic symptoms." Common complaints by spouses are treated with caution: "In summary there is some evidence that khat use can be seen as a strain on family relationships. However it is impossible to say that a person’s khat use is the cause of family disruption, or just a convenient scapegoat for it."

The conclusion holds criminalisation as likely to create more problems than continued tolerance, declares that khat consumption poses no threat to British society, and recognises that immigrant communities adjusting to life in an alien environment face other problems of much greater magnitude.

The assessment is parsimonious, yet the report transcends its stated objectives to define a new threshold in what has been a flawed debate.

LIKE THE recommendations for controlling sales to minors and non-legal measures discouraging its spread –miraa is now sold in small supermarkets in some urban neighbourhoods – the report’s wisdom is that many issues are best addressed at "home."

Formal discourse on catha edulis is too often characterised by blatant Western bias, elevation of narrow clinical findings over ethno-pharmacology knowledge, an uncritical acceptance of sloppy and sensational journalism, and disregard for social learning and cultural processes. The growing corps of producers and the expanding mass of consumers feign ignorance and do their thing. In the meantime, catha edulis is morphing into an international commodity whose value will soar when the likes of software developers in Silicon Valley discover its concentration-enhancing properties. I see a thousand khat plantations blooming in China, and foreign-owned patents.

IT IS clearly too late to put the khat jinn back in the bottle. Even Saudi Arabia, the first state to criminalise the plant, appears to be relaxing its stance: Yemeni expatriates report that while those caught with khat are still prosecuted, the authorities no longer actively patrol against it. Gizan, a town near the Yemeni border, has become a free zone where khat is consumed without risk.

These trends underscore the institutional schizophrenia prevailing in Kenya, a most curious state of affairs. The question of what action should be taken at this juncture, however, subsumes issues complicated by the plant’s distinctive agronomic characteristics and biophysical effects. Active state intervention may prove to be counterproductive; certainly the call of some Nyambene growers for a "Miraa Act" is ill-advised.

RATHER, THE government can act to legitimise miraa as a source of rural livelihood and protect the genetics of indigenous varieties against patenting by private corporations. Legitimisation would encourage institutional support for best practices, e.g. the sophisticated agroforestry system that make Meru miraa the best in the world, and discouraging monocultural production on small farms. This would be a first step towards consultation on legal and voluntary controls for juvenile consumption and places where miraa is sold and consumed.

The UK report provides a platform for domesticating the issues raised by expanding production and demonisation of what is already a significant agro-industry in the region; the alternative is to treat the commission’s outcome as "the ban that never happened."

Paul Goldsmith is a Meru-based researcher.


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