ILLEGAL

Khat

CATHA EDULIS

Khat played a small but pivotal role in the 1993 battle of Mogadishu in which two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. Gun-toting Somalian men stuffed khat leaves into their cheeks and raced around Mogadishu with a jittery high that lasted until late into the night, contributing to the violence and the deaths of American soldiers trapped at the crash site.

Author Mark Bowden found an interesting route into Somalia when he was researching his book Black Hawk Down: he flew on a khat plane. Because the leaves must be consumed fresh, Bowden had to pay for the amount of khat he was displacing that day. “What they did was offload two hundred pounds of khat so I could sit on the plane,” he said in an interview. “I paid for myself as if I were khat to get into the country.”

The leaves deliver a clear-headed euphoria that lasts for hours. In Yemen and Somalia up to three-quarters of adult men use the drug, stuffing a few leaves between their cheek and gum, in much the same way that coca is used in Latin America. And like coca, the khat plant has fueled wars between those who claim it is a benign cultural ritual that has been practiced for centuries and those who see it as a public health menace.

When a khat plane lands in Somalia, its cargo is unloaded and distributed in a matter of hours. Men lounge about in a blissed-out state, chewing their khat, tending to neither their families nor their jobs. Long-term use leads to aggression, delusions, paranoia, and psychosis. But the typical khat user is not deterred by these alarming symptoms. As one man put it, “When I chew it, I feel like my problems disappear. Khat is my brother. It takes care of all things.” Another man said, “You open up like a flower when you chew.”

Catha edulis is a flowering shrub that flourishes in Ethiopia and Kenya, where it enjoys full sun and warm temperatures. The dark, glossy leaves emerge from red stalks, and young leaves may also be fringed in red. The plant reaches twenty feet or more in the wild, but only five or six feet in cultivation.

Its most potent ingredient, cathinone, is classifed in the United States as a Schedule I narcotic, putting it on the same footing as marijuana and peyote. The level of cathinone in the leaves drops sharply just forty-eight hours after harvest, a fact that turns drug smuggling into a wild race. Once the cathinone breaks down, all that is left is cathine, a very mild chemical similar to the diet pill ephedrine. For this reason, police have to move fast to get the plant to a drug lab. After forty-eight hours a major drug bust will become a diet pill raid.

Khat dealers in Seattle, Vancouver, and New York have been busted for selling bundles of leaves under the counter in small grocery stores that cater to Somalian immigrants. In 2006 Somalia’s Islamic movement outlawed the plant in the areas it controlled and stopped all flights arriving from Kenya in an attempt to crush the use of the plant. It remains to be seen whether Somalians will give up their drug, which has been called the opium of the people.

Meet the Relatives Khat is related to about thirteen hundred species of tropical and temperate vines and shrubs, including the highly poisonous staff vine, and the equally poisonous spindle shrubs known as Euonymus.