has remained steady japan has announced its own operation to protect its ships and gulf war says choosing not to join a simulate u.s. led mission japanese prime minister shinzo abe a brief to rein in president hassan rouhani on the operation last week tokyo will send a warship and patrol planes next month the un has condemned an artillery attack on a market and more than yemen near the border with saudi arabia 17 people were killed including 12 ethiopian migrants who the rebels say the market and province has been targeted 3 times in a month mexico says it's taking a diplomatic dispute with bolivia's new government to the international court of justice is accuses bolivia of intimidating diplomatic stuff and spying on its embassy in the pot as well those are the headlines the news continues here to people and power stay with us. what kind of care does that provide and is that he will be willing to pick up the cost we'll bring you the stories and

developments that are rapidly changing the world we live in so is it possible for trump to actually obliterate the whole of the counting the cost on al-jazeera. west africa is battling an opioid abuse trust medicine such as tramadol legally prescribed by doctors from pain relief but taken into life threatening texts by millions in search for the fakes already strong buffeting and a lot of. people in power has been to nigeria to investigate have the drug smuggling trade and abused widespread corruption the follow system has traffic and the appalling health consequences for those in its grip.

ringback if you're going to stay in the midst of the worst drug addiction and it's barely a week goes by without spring international reports like these documents in america's opioid crisis. the u.s. is not the only country facing such a predicament really. lagos nigeria is africa's largest city in the country with the biggest population on the continent over 200000000 people. the city is over crowded polluted and poverty stricken. and adding to its woes it's suffering its own widescale and growing opioid addiction epidemic. i was abusing the list if you do this if you still need to take

time i don't feel like you have and yes tramadol a lifesaving opioid painkiller is also being abused on a massive scale by all sectors of society a little too cool for for. this regulates of the other appeared painkillers like. a drug which has been implicated in more than 400000 deaths in the us since 2000 tramadol is less dangerous than oxycodone it's no less addictive according to a new study by the mayo clinic a prestigious us medical center the key findings our study which was looking at the effect of tramadol on long term dependence in patients from acute sort of pain was the patients who received tramadol actually to our surprise i did not have lower rates of long term opioid use but actually had slightly higher rates of going on to long term opioid use tramadol is currently a schedule for opioids versus other opioids like oxy caught on or schedule 2 meaning that the government considers those at higher risk of abuse and long term

dependence we found is in fact really terminal is not actually any lower interest rate of abuse or long term dependence the epidemic isn't just confined to lagos it's infected the into. country. the united nations. released the results of nigeria. what we found is really of grave concern when we're talking. almost 5000000 users over the past 12 months and the tendency appears to be rising poverty unemployment desperation of people and their living situations is one of the drivers a lot of people seem to be using it associated with hard manual labor with sex work for. eases her ability to submit to a client's more extreme demands she calls the drug street name.

meaning. 50 if. any. other abuses legal and highly dangerous version of the drug legally produced. 50 or 100. tap that is being used widely for pain therapy it

is really for a large part of the population the only pain medication. when we're talking about abuse great. we're talking about. significantly over a. 100 milligram what we have seen in seizures up to 225 milligrams and what we have heard in the reports of. people mentioned even up 240-2500 taps. spoke to us on condition we had. he's from a stable middle class family and works as a chef. around. the ground. to feed the family wants. to be each pull cost $300.00. a pull that's more than double the

strength of legally available. to much of. my friends the. abuse i go. because of drugs so where does this abuse come from that is being produced both legally as well as that is produced specifically for the non-medical use is being produced in. officially or in. tory's it is reaching nigeria primarily by sea it's entering through 2 major ports of lagos. this begs the question. of nigeria how does it get so widely distributed across the

country. to interview to lagos drug dealer he agreed to before we didn't show his face. his business consists of a. in a suitcase full of with legal drugs. the tramadol he keeps out of sight i'm not counting terminal in sandy hook and just having to time i don't know but sometimes the pocket determined. most of his clients are young men. when he moves because. now i just guys will be pushing. it all sells to women. bank town. and then. went away clean safra told you had to do cool foods to meet him selling time on the left sometimes that's wrong turn to pills a week a significant amount for a street below where we wanted to know does he get them from these people became us

and us i mean come on talks to us in secret in did not knowing even though you go to time and go to huntingdon unclear at this point he became wary and wouldn't tell us anything more about a supplier as we put this question to you in o.t.c. we need to be very honest we know relatively little about the criminal networks that are being involved how well they are organized how large they are. there's about 7 or 8 different nationalities that i've been identified the other issue that suggests a certain level of sophistication is to mere size of the individual seizures some of these seizures allegedly are reaching several tons dozens of tolls which really suggests like a relatively sophisticated process. to find out more about such seizures we arranged a visit to a pop nigeria's largest and busiest port. in 2018

customs and other authorities seized 41 containers of illegal tramadol here. a school to buy an armed convoy of cars. drug law enforcement officials that's what they came to show us today. this. is from. $2800.00 seizures were a coup for the authorities the largest single seizure involved $33.00 containers. they claimed 198000000000. that's over $550000000.00 u.s. dollars. with such massive sums of money involved we want to know how many perpetrators had been brought to book. people who have imported.

the. i can do speak for this time. the. investigation is going on on once is concluded prosecuted. but in the past there have been other. coming. what is wonderful for. the national drug agency or india later told us that in the last 2 years only 5 people have been charged in relation to the apapa port seizures the prosecution is the still in process and to date no one's been convicted. we asked the commander about allegations of corruption at the port. is not an issue because he walked in for like ts i don't think. any issue.

but the events which unfolded soon after seemed to indicate otherwise we phoned the customs official handing off a box of trial. to a port worker. then we captured boxes of the drug being thrown over the fanes. finally as we were leaving the paperwork was arrested going to literally for stealing tramadol we tried to film that to one. of the words. my you tell me of the. amount. of the body. you.

know the. customs did take it seriously. that is we were detained and pressured to delete our footage of the arrest. in the end though they let us go and official later confirmed that the arista pool had stolen the tramadol . but the ports of lagos are just the start of the problem next we travel to my degree in the north east of nigeria the city was once the headquarters of. the islamic state franchise terrorizing this part of the country since 2009. which has been fighting a jury and military forces attacking schools and declaring an islamic state in territory it controls since then through attacks and suicide bombings that killed an estimated 27000 people over 2000000 civilians have been displaced. we've heard disturbing reports the tramadol might be playing

a role in the insurgency. to understand how the conflict is affecting civilians here we interview a psychiatrist of my degrees federal neuropsychiatric hospital. i many patients. he shows us around a rehab. isn't it it's almost empty but that isn't for lack of those needing treatment. sent. 1 the source of livelihood of. treatment also since the insurrection began he's seen previously unthinkably high dosages of tramadol come on to the market we have. 625.

is actually. present there are individuals. 10. $25.00 shocking indeed that service 60 times the maximum legal dosage. one of those who can't afford treatment is above my. comment than if i didn't that i won a number of items i wish for that. same question and she has a home. that was 4 years ago. there's another that's going to have over a 100 more tons of the minus with. me the other day that he was not with you that's because you assumed i was was in that i don't know if this is a god i had no idea. at the time of his brother's death of a druggie flayed his village. he now lives in a camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of my degree. leaders or

whatever and the rule is in the serenity government. when they are going to do a damn always. believe to do we were no one any one know any anyone no one he don't look at any. it took or knew go into god he has anybody it's not as he already did i mean intended to question one man and see region if i have or now when one time when i shall but as i'm going to academia. in other indicating i say how i don't in the n.b.a. she hasn't yet. and it's not just civilians are taking. also came here to investigate suspicions that the drug is fueling the insurgency itself. for

security reasons we could only interview. like many of these arrested fighters he was forced to join the movement when he was in his teens. he was in the movement for 4 years before escaping. now he lives in a refugee camp outside my degree. and. put them to work because.

the drug enabled them to carry out these arduous 24 missions it was also used to groom them for what was to come. so you know. we don't want to do that that. you know. he's led the group to become even more violent committing a text suicide bombings and most infamously the abduction of 276 school girls from chibok village 2014 read. by the book issue and you're

listening. to. the tramadol also helped to be deeply traumatic memory and. how much. she's. actually. going to. yes yes no doubt that the drug is essential to sustaining insurgency but i want to.

go. finally we travel westwards to. jerry's 2nd largest city. its got one of the highest poverty rates the country and also some of its worst tramadol abuse. at the mean a teaching hospital. of legally prescribed and the dangers of the illegal street version can be seen in one location. this morning. with the patients and. the psychiatric ward is struggling to cope with the fallout from the abuse grade version 44. 50 to 60 percent of our clients people. use. due to the lack of resources drug users share the

same ward with psychiatric patients. which takes a short period of time and then we have to undo the psychological dependence. and it takes a long time even after you need to be quite a long time patient. but the flip side of the tramadol is this over regulating it would have disastrous results in a general ward we visit a patient for whom trammels an essential pain treatment. suffers from sickle cell disease a blood disorder which causes acute pain and stunts growth although he looks much younger he's actually 18.

2018 the nigerian government in an effort to clamp down on the beauty of coding. banned them extensively some doctors and experts are concerned that the authorities might resort to similar tactics. if you buy drugs. because. they need the drug so if. we visit the local commander of the. in the city they tell us they slowly winning

the war against illegal trying. to illustrate they doing to show us what used to be. the prison is relocated to make room for confiscating. not only is it being sold nigeria but it's being trafficked to neighboring countries to. see. this is.

so this is the. group. who was. asked. to do. the $500.00 it's something it's. all this tramadol they tell us mr stern for destruction of the jail full of it is just a drop in the ocean the country still drowning in the drug. next we join in india a drug raid. looking and acting very much like the americans you train them they take to the streets in an armored convoy. in a display of force they travel through kano shunting traffic on the road there is no you right here they disembark to read a large local market. evy handed operation probably put

on for our benefit produces a few results they arrest a young man wearing a cannabis t. shirt. it's unclear if you even has any cannabis on him nevertheless he's bundled on to an in the truck which is fast filling up with other young men from the market . nigeria has a 55 percent youth unemployment rate and it also has the highest number of people living in extreme poverty in the world even more than india so men like these sometimes turn to drug dealing out of necessity. it's not 6 in the right preps up but can i jerry is war against illegal tramadol really be one with guns without addressing the underlying causes of poverty unemployment and inequality that seems highly unlikely.

the pollution is palpable. delis shares the symptoms of many modern metropolis but it's unique features have been gotten a crisis. people in power investigates the toxic mix feeding the city's invisible killer and asks why more is not being done to relieve its citizens the least deadly aired on al-jazeera. al-jazeera as their want us to embrace the bookstalls of it to see what happens next which i'm sure. fired by the media where mother fabricated all 7 treats that we need to hear the middle east now is being all about change people have gone hostile here the area the mission of the national army is

just 6 feet tie up the oil company and i'm just your stories about telling it from the peoples perspective what they think is happening in their culture. what happens when plans for a new life are brewed and d. railed by committing serious crimes from drug trafficking to remembering to madonna what it i don't remember how many times it stopped there the way her boyfriend spoke to me and even her al-jazeera world goes inside an italian prison meeting men and women from north africa who left home only to face life behind mas double exile on al-jazeera. and that's because technological and peace into an awful us and group over to live side by side. in its. life ups challenges kenya up developers to help small scale farmers cultivate a new future but can mobile phones really be the seed of change it was poaching

because it's all over the world people. live outside silicon savannah the knowledge of the euro. a passenger plane with 100 people on board crashes in kazakhstan at least 9 people died. and this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up turkey outlines plans to send troops to libya next month to tripoli against the huffed us forces. iraq's president says he'll resign rather than a private candidate for prime minister backed by the biggest block and politicians .