On codeine ban

There was an incident that happened in Kano at wedding ceremony, where a gold jewelry was missing and the owner insisted on calling the police to find the missing jewelry. During the course of the search, codeine syrup was found in 60 per cent of the bags of the women at the ceremony. Alarming, right?

Now, the Federal Government has banned the importation and production of codeine syrup. This should have happened a long time ago. The directive has to be followed to the latter so that there will be no illegal importation and/or production of fakes. The Codeine menace has been left to exist for far too long. It is condescending that we had to wait for a foreign media outlet to run the story and put us to shame before we took decisive action.

Because of the massive scale of codeine addiction, there must be strict enforcement and moves to ensure a substitute is not found, if users find an alternative, there will be an exponential increase in the number of stressed out, disenchanted and mentally deranged people in our society. That time bomb may blow in our faces soon. That is the fault of the individual, family, government and the society.

Our society may never be the same again.

Adeyemi Ahmed Abiodun, [email protected]