Substance Abuse Destroying Youths
Tobacco control advocates and public health experts raise the alarm over the rising cases of beggars, vagabonds and lunatics, most of whom have been found to be under the influence of smoking and using various tobacco products like cigarettes, nicotine and emerging products, as well as the abuse of other dangerous substances, a development that has become rampant in Lagos and other Nigerian cities
By Edu Abade
Many Nigerian adolescents and university undergraduates now fall prey to tobacco, nicotine, emerging products addiction and smoking of other substances, reducing them to vagabonds, miscreants, beggars and most awfully, lunatics. They liter the streets of major cities in Nigeria, including Lagos from the popular Marina to Victoria Island, Ikeja, Lekki-Ajah axis to Iyana-Ipaja and Iyana-Iba, as well as Oshodi and Ikotun, Train Stations in Alaba, Orile and Mile 2, among other densely populated areas.
Having observed the ugly trend for sometime, Tentacle went to town in the last couple of weeks to monitor the situation and our worst fears was confirmed recently at a two-day training workshop for journalists organized by the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa CSEA in collaboration with the Development Gateway and the Tobacco Control Data Initiative TCDI.
The TCDI revelations from the dashboard of tobacco harm, illicit trade and taxation, among others, presented by Rachel Kitonyo-Devotsu and Thomas Van Huyssteen were stunning as the organizers of the training, moderated by the Executive Director of the Renevlyn Development Initiative, RDI, Philip Jakpor, reeled out country by country data covering the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia and South Africa.
Nigeria’s dashboard showed a very disturbing trend in that the share of Nigerian smokers who say pictorial health warnings prompted them to think about quitting smoking rose from 26.7 percent in 2012 to 43.3 percent in 2025. The data also pointed out that Shisha is in the shadows as the TCDI commissioned dedicated Shisha research in Nigeria with 78 interviews in 13 states and a 611-respondent survey across the country’s six geopolitical zones.
“Flavors, curiosity, stress relief and low awareness of harm drive use; availability in supposedly smoke-free zones is a documented gap; high cost and social stigma are the main barriers to use,” the dashboard for Nigeria states.
Given the TCDI dashboard figures, it can be safely concluded that smoking has caused a lot of harm to Nigerian youths, which is why good-spirited Nigerians are insisting that the ‘madness’ inflicted on humanity by the tobacco industry giants must stop.
Some Known Victims
The case of two brothers, Randy Felix and Brandon Felix readily comes to mind. While Randy, 32 dropped out in year four from a five-year Electrical and Electronics Engineering Course at the Lagos State University, LASU. Randy continues smoking stuff and is not even thinking of going back to school to complete his schooling or thinking of something else to do to earn a living. He now begs on the street to feed, but whenever he gets any assistance in cash, his first instinct is to go a-smoking.
His 27-year-old younger brother, Brandon, who secured admission into the Yaba College of Technology, YABATECH, started running out of his mind the moment he started smoking cigarettes and other harmful stuffs and has been taken to the Obadore Rehabilitation Home in Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State, where it is learnt that he still sneaks out at odd hours to find something to smoke. Prior to that move, he was chained and locked up in a room for over three months, but immediately he was released by his compassionate father, he went to smoke and steal around the vicinity!
Findings indicate that another young man, identified as David Ogbolu, who picked up smoking at a very tender age was running mad one night after smoking some stuff and wanted to rape his own mother, but the situation was saved after the mother raised the alarm in the middlle of the nigt and was only resucued by some neighbours.
Also, Lekan Pamilerin, who took to smoking as a teen and who snubbed all entreaties to stop, went completely raving stack mad and after several attempts to rehabilitate him my members of his family failed, he was left to his fate and is now roaming the neighbourhood half-clad in rags.
The case of a journalist with one of Nigeria’s first-tier newspapers, Ovoke Eberu, remains more pathetic. He had been smoking for decades, but by the time he stopped smoking due to the pressure asserted on him by this writer in 2018, the damage had been done. He died of lungs and kidney complications on May 1, 2026. He was 52. Smokers are indeed liable to die young!
Social Nuisance/Security Threat
Most of the addicted smokers are miscreants who appear docile and beggarly in the day time, but become active criminals at night. They can be violent when provoked or when anyone encroaches on their space. While gathering materials for this story, this writer was assaulted by a group of three young men who were smoking in the neighbourhood. He attempted to take a perfect photograph of the smoking scene, but things went awry when they saw their picture being taken. They charged and rushed at the writer, seized his phone, but the intervention of some neighbours who knew the reporter saved the day.
Speaking on the menace of the hoodlums, Malachi Ogbuehi, told Tentacle that they may appear like vagabonds and lunatics in the day time, but when night falls, they turn to lions and tigers as engage in all manners of criminal activities including stealing, snatching of bags from unwary persons and sometimes even outright robbery attacks. Some of them possess weapons with which they commit crimes, while some of them actually act as informants to bigger criminals.
“The Lagos State government and other state governments need to monitor their activities and engage in a systematic mopping up of the miscreants, as they have clearly become a security threat in Lagos and elsewhere,” he said.
A Smoker’s Testimony
A chain smoker for over 30 years, Job Jonathan Abigho, testifies that smoking cigarettes or using other tobacco products like Shisha, vape and using all manner of emerging products being churned out by industry giants like the British American Tobacco, BAT, Philip Morris International, PMI, and others are highly addictive and that users can only quit by some kind of divine intervention. He said he started smoking in the 1990s at the age of 18 as an undergraduate at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State Nigeria.
“Almost all smoking habits begin with taking a first drag of a cigarette usually due to peer pressure and it escalates to taking other ‘smokeable’ substances like SK, Canadian cloud, Colorado or Colos and Ice, among others. Unfortunately, most young people these days who migrate from smoking tobacco products to other more dangerous substances do not know when to stop when their brain capacity cannot carry the weight of what they now smoke and that has been largely responsible for the growing number of vagabonds and insane youth we have around today.
“Another important point to note is that whereas governments give tobacco companies licenses to produce their various products and collect taxes, the same cannot be said of the other illicit products, which are now in preponderant supply and quite within the reach of most youths, who hide under unemployment and hardship to engage in a spree of using tobacco products and other unhealthy substances,” he said.
He further canvassed stringent measures such as outright ban of the products or arrest of anyone found using them to curb the madness on the streets being exhibited by young people, who have become social deviance as they engage in rape, begging or stealing and robbery to feed their habits.
Speaking in an interview, Abigho said, “Smoking actually starts from peer group pressure and once you start it becomes addictive, and it’s a little bit difficult to let go without having precautionary measure or proper guidance, and from cigarette smoking, which is mostly used in Africa in the Western world, they now graduate to other substances.
“One, if your brain does not have the capacity or not large enough, you cannot absorb much, that is what leads to most youths to have mental dysfunction. Two, those that they have enough capacity to absorb it may not have eaten before they take the stuff. As such majority of the youth smoke cigarettes or the other stuff on an empty stomach and when the side effect comes in, it becomes very intoxicating. It makes the blood stream flow very faster and higher than normal.
So, most times they don’t know what to do. They usually feel out of this world. So, some will tell you that “I’m looking for my leg or my hand.” If they skip one round, they go for full dose. Then they’ll get used to just like taking off for headache just like taking Emzor and Paracetamol. That leads them to go to SK. That’s another name for drugs.
“And now after SK, they migrate to loud or Canadian loud and then comes Colos, which renders the user useless for like one hour depending on capacity, but while the effect lasts, the smoker could just stand in one place, start sleeping or sitting motionless in one place, but after a while, they will regain consciousness after eating good food. Even some big men and politicians in this country take these things, the only difference is that they eat well. The truth, however, is that all the smoking habits starts from cigarettes,” he explained.
A Spiritual Dimension
Speaking on the harms smoking of tobacco and other substances have caused in society, Pastor Osaro Ogbebor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, established a spiritual dimension to the menace. He told Tentacle that when the enemy of mankind, which is Satan the Devil sees the bright future of some young men, he lures them to pick up some harmful habits, one of which is smoking tobacco, Indian hemp and all the other harmful products.
“But clearly, any victim of such smoking habits should first of all agree with the enemy of his destiny to be able to feel the negative impact of his actions because in a normal situation, once anyone feels uncomfortable in his head after taking any stuff, either tobacco or alcohol, the first reaction is to stop, but the young people of these days prefer to punish their parents and the entire society by embracing what is clearly dangerous and that is the major challenge. I believe there is a spiritual dimension to what we see these days among our youths. There is no other explanation to this in my opinion,” he said.
Government Negligence And Failure
As the beggars, vagabonds and lunatics litter the streets and even high brow areas of Lagos, the Ministry of Health and Ministry of the Environment cared less about the development, a situation that has caught the attention of residents. With so many deviants in town, it is only a matter of time and this may results in a major social distortion.
When contacted, an Assistant Director of the Lagos State Ministry of Health, Olalekan Ogunleye, told Tentacle that although he sights beggars and mad people whenever he drives around the city, he never thought the situation had worsened to that extent. He said for now, there was little or nothing the state government can do to salvage the situation, maintaining that families who have some of their members in such critical conditions, should make efforts to rehabilitate them, adding however, that the state government would be monitoring the situation and intervene where necessary at the appropriate time.
On its part, the Ministry of the Environment said at one point or the other, the government had conducted raids on some flash points where it believed criminal elements who are addicted to smoking all manner of tobacco and illicit substances hibernate around the city and scores of deviants were arrested and moved to the appropriate facilities for rehabilitation.
A senior official of the ministry who asked not to be named, also shifted the responsibility to the families of the victims, adding that parents and guardians needed to do more to safeguard their wards from constituting social nuisance, especially in Lagos and other parts of the country. He enjoined families to continually monitor their children and nip every noticed deviant behavior in the bud at a very early stage.
The Solution
Citing the $110 million fine imposed on BAT Nigeria, the dashboard pointed out that in November 2025, Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) fined the British American Tobacco Nigeria US$110 million for multiple breaches of the National Tobacco Control Act 2015 and its 2019 Regulations, including producing other emerging products that target children of school age. Such fines should be imposed on the tobacco industry giants on a regular basis to discourage them from focusing on profits over people and public health.
There is the need for government to ban all the harmful products from the Nigerian market, seeing that smokers still patronise the products despite all the warning signs such as Smokers Are Liable To Die Young, Tobacco Smoke Contains Over 70 Substances Known To Cause and Smoking Kills, Quit Now! in cigarette packs.
A higher tax regime should be imposed on all tobacco products,while expecting their total banning. The TCDI dashboard on Nigeria indicates that the current tax remains insignificant to curbing the menace, adding that the 2026–2028 tobacco tax regime adds only ₦1 per stick per year while inflation over the prior period ran at 15.06 percent.
“That leaves Nigeria’s specific tax at just 29.7 percent of the the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS-recommended level; researchers note a 10 percent price rise is associated with a 4–8 percent drop in demand, with youth the most price-sensitive group,” it added.
Above all, to stop the madness, there is the need for sustained education and awareness campaign by families, individuals, government agencies like the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency NDLEA and university authorities on the dangers of using tobacco products or other harmful substances. Enough of the harm caused by the use of tobacco and other dangerous substances!
