The latest survey by the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) has shown that the number of people consuming cannabis otherwise known as bhang has increased by 90% in the past five years.
The national survey on the “Status of Drugs and Substance Use (DSU) in Kenya, 2022” released on Monday has recorded that one in every 53 Kenyans aged 15 – 65 years, an approximate population of 518,807 people, are currently using the drug.
Of these, one in every 26 are males (475,770) and 1 in every 333 are females (43,037) are women.
The highest consumption of the drug was recorded in Nairobi with a percentage of 6.3% followed by Nyanza (2.4%) and Coast (1.9%).
On the list of the most abused drugs in the nation, cannabis ranked fourth below Khat, otherwise known as Miraa, Tobacco and Alcohol which topped the list.
Using the same age demographic of 15-65 years, about 3,199,119 people were found to be using alcohol with most of them hailing from Western Kenya.
Nairobi was found to have the highest prevalence of manufactured legal alcohol at 10.3% followed by Central at 10.0% and Eastern (8.4%).
The use of chang’aa and traditional liquor was highest in Western region and potable spirits in the Central region.
Tobacco users were about 2,305,929 nationwide with the majority residing in Central Kenya.
Miraa chewers were most in the Eastern region as 964,737 were recorded nationwide.
The survey was conducted in selected clusters spread across the nation, sampling Kenyans aged 15 to 65 years.
The sample was obtained from the Kenya Household Master Sample Frame (K-HMSF) maintained by the KNBS.
NACADA adds that the survey is a follow-up survey to the 2007, 2012 and 2017 five–year surveys on DSU which is used as an evaluation tool to assess the effectiveness of drugs and substance use demand and supply reduction programs implemented in the last 5-years.
