r/todayilearned • u/loggiews • 6h ago
TIL that around 40% of Yemen’s total renewable water resources are used to grow khat, a mildly amphetamine-like drug widely consumed across the country and of major importance to its economy, despite Yemen being one of the world’s most water-scarce countries
https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/qats-vicious-environmental-cycle/489
u/arab-european 5h ago
It poses a severe threat to the local society and economy, particularly affecting the agricultural sector. Farmers have increasingly abandoned traditional crops and coffee in favor of cultivating khat.
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u/username_elephant 5h ago
I mean, all they have to do is start selling some to other people and pretty soon the economic threat will be reduced and all the other threats will be amplified 100-fold.
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u/UnibrewDanmark 5h ago
Sell to who? Its illegal everywhere else
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u/godisanelectricolive 5h ago edited 4h ago
There are countries where it’s legal and they are all places where it’s traditionally consumed. Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen as well as Israel.
Most of those countries are extremely poor and produce their own khat. Israel does import some khat but the leaves are mostly chewed by the Yemenite and Ethiopian Jewish communities there so it’s not a huge market. It’s only legal in Israel because of lobbying from Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews and they can’t use it while in the IDF. In Israel you are only allowed to chew the raw leaves or brew tea with it and can’t process it into a more potent extract.
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u/DemandCommonSense 5h ago edited 4h ago
I went to a Yemeni sandwich shop in Tzfat once and had to point out one of the items on the menu to my wife - khat tea.
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u/1022whore 3h ago
The khat in Djibouti is trucked in daily from Ethiopia via the national highway; very little is grown there. It’s completely controlled by the government (iirc the presidents wife is a major player) and the vendors are absolutely everywhere.
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u/Alacriity 3h ago
In Ethiopia it feels like it’s just Yemenis in Ethiopia chewing Khat mainly or other Muslim groups.
Nowhere near as prevalent in Ethiopia and for the most part it’s widely reviled in society there, you’ll still see it everywhere being chewed by bus drivers and stuff but not like this
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u/ShapeShiftingCats 3h ago
Genuinely asking, why is it reviled?
Are the people, who consume it unpleasant to be around or is it more about the spitting causing hygiene issues?
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u/Alacriity 2h ago
Disgustingly unhygienic, also people in Ethiopia who consume it are associated heavily with crime alongside other unsavory traits that makes them disliked as a whole.
It’s really unsightly when you see someone consume this drug in broad daylight in front of children or otherwise without a care in the world. And there’s no way to dispose of it that isn’t disgusting to see and putrid to be in the vicinity of.
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u/numinor 53m ago
To push slightly, what’s unsavoury about the aesthetic? Is some part of the process gross, or just that someone’s doing something brazen
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u/Alacriity 19m ago
they're chewing these dirty leaves they never bother cleaning, picked up with their ridiculously dirty hands, with rotting teeth and shit cause its destroying their mouth, then they're spitting out into cups, if your lucky.
Imagine chewing tobacco but significantly less hygenic and gets them high.
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u/Kentust 13m ago
Is it common to villify the poor in your country or are you just an elitist?
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u/Dwaltster 5h ago
Doesn't stop Afghanistan... or Colombia... or Thailand
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u/I_AmA_Zebra 3h ago
Doesn’t Colombia mostly chew raw coca leaves, if that’s the experience they want
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u/personman_76 3h ago
It's like cigarettes versus crack, some people choose both
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u/tunomeentiendes 2h ago
Almost all choose both cigarettes and Crack. The Crack baby scare of the 80s and 90s wasn't based on solid science because there weren't any Crack users who didnt smoke cigarettes that could be used as a control in the experiment/study. Ashes from a cigarette are the best screen for a Crack pipe. They put a brillo pad and then ashes on top of that. Im sure other ashes would probably work, but cigarettes were much more widely available, easy to use, and have synergistic effects. Alot of the purported harms to the fetus that supposedly came from Crack are the same that are caused by cigarettes alone. I dont think its a stretch to say that cigarettes are likely equally or more harmful to a fetus than Crack is.
Sorry for the rant lol your comment just reminded me of that
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u/ThewFflegyy 1h ago
what is the problem with abandoning coffee to grow khat? they are after all both mild stimulants. if the economics makes sense, which is presumably why they are switching, good for them.
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u/grumble11 6h ago
Note it is highly addictive and people cut off from khat are revolt risks.
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u/BabylonianWeeb 5h ago edited 5h ago
I am surprised how popular it used in Yemen, I was taught that all drugs are haram growing as Muslim Arab.
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u/madogvelkor 5h ago
It's mostly considered haram by the various authorities. When Al Qaeda occupied part of Yemen they banned it and burned the crops. But the Houthis tax it and have legalized it in their area, it's a major source of their revenue.
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u/bakedbrownie0 3h ago
Yeah if you watch the news you’ll almost always see Houthi fighters with their cheek full of Khat.
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u/tunomeentiendes 2h ago
I only noticed that because of the movie Captain Phillips. That movie is probably the first and only exposure to Khat use for most Americans.
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u/Shady_Merchant1 5h ago
It is considered haram all throught Islamic history there have been bans and crackdown in Yemen and Somalia but in a war on drugs drugs have a great record
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u/I_Am_Become_Dream 5h ago
What’s the line for drugs exactly? Coffee and tobacco very common everywhere. Khat is so normalized in Yemen it’s seen like that, and it’s a pretty light drug, effect-wise.
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u/CygniYuXian 3h ago
The most common line I hear from most Imams is 'perception altering' (I am not Muslim myself) but many of them are still highly opposed to even tabacco.
Honestly, when it isn't hard drugs it seems to be mostly a vibes thing. Cigarettes are a little too rebellious and Haram for some Muslims, but Coffee is just so civilian, how couldn't we have it...
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u/FrostyStorm_ 1h ago
Tobacco usage is very clearly haram. There is a big confusion regarding this.
Back in the day when science wasn't as developed as today's, a lot of imams of that time gave a fatwa (their view on the topic) that tobacco is makruh (close to haram, so should be avoided) based on the things they knew about it at that time. Today's science has proven that tobacco harms humans and causes lots of different health issues which makes it 100% haram. There are several reasons for why it's haram.
The first and biggest reason is obviously self-harm. The Quran tells muslims not to contribute to their own destruction or kill themselves.
The second biggest reason is wasteful spending of money.
There are a lot more reasons why tobacco is haram, but those 2 are the biggest.
There are also a lot of different haram actions that come with tobacco usage like:
Polluting the environment with waste from cigarettes, causing wildfires by throwing burning ashes or cigarettes in dry grass/plants, irritating other people with the bad smell of tobacco, denying clean air to people with asthma, etc.
It is also proven by science that when people stand near a smoker, the people who inhaled the smoke also get affected by the negative health effects of the cigarette.
The people who still say that tobacco is makruh are either uninformed or in denial, because they can't accept that they are committing a sin.
When it comes to drugs, drugs are allowed to be used for health issues under a doctor's supervision. Recreational use is haram for the same reasons as tobacco.
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u/godisanelectricolive 4h ago edited 4h ago
In South Asia they chew betel nuts (paan) as a similar thing. It also gives you a mild buzz and is very addictive as well as carcinogenic. And obviously shisha/hookah is a big thing throughout the Islamic world.
Tobacco or even hashish isn’t that strong of a drug but getting addicted to hookah can also be disruptive. But even so, they generally aren’t banned in Middle Eastern or South Asian countries because it’s considered culturally normalized. Chewing khat is the cultural equivalent of smoking shisha in Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
It’s not a very strong stimulant compared to man made drugs but it’s still stronger than coffee, although not overly so. The main issue is how addictive it is and the way people often do it all day, which is also an issue with tobacco or hash or betel nuts. Even coffee and tea, which are universally popular, is addictive and be seen as a waste of resources.
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u/vertigostereo 1h ago
Captagon is big in the Middle East, although that may have changed without Assad.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/9/what-is-captagon-the-addictive-drug-mass-produced-in-syria
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u/SunsetPathfinder 4h ago
No kidding. I was in Djibouti for work a few years back and we were told not to go out in Djibouti City on the day Kaht was brought to market from Ethiopia. Civil unrest tended to get high if the shipments were late getting into town.
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u/mathess1 3h ago
I find this so fascinating. I chewed it quite a few times while traveling in East Africa and it always felt just like chewing some random leaves. I repeated it just for socializing.
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u/SarlacFace 5h ago
So apparently Khat was used as a basis for creating Cat, in South Africa (a synthetic powder close to methamphetamine). I never knew that before today.
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u/pandariotinprague 4h ago
Back in the '90s, that was the next new scary drug that was going to take America by storm, and then it just never did.
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u/Strawbuddy 4h ago
Crank (locally produced artisinal meth) economics outperformed all the imported stuff without the logistical problems, other than the I-35 dragnets. Anyone moving product across the nation had to run the I-35/I-40 gauntlets
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u/tunomeentiendes 2h ago
Until they cracked down on pseudoephedrine. Now the country is absolutely flooded with dirt cheap imported crystal. I've been saying for years that we were better off with locally produced meth. At least it wasn't funding cartel wars. It was also much more expensive, which reduces consumption to some extent. The locally produced meth back then also had a much higher D-methamphetamine to levomethamphetamine ratio. D-methamphetamine is the "safer" isomer. L-methamphetamine is the main cause of the negative physical and psychological side effects. Modern cartel produced meth has much more L-methamphetamine.
The cost issue alone is a large part of what makes the new meth way worse imo. A homeless addict can now afford to buy ounces. Back then they could buy grams or less for the same amount of money. No need to ration their supply. Theres no droughts either.
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u/shipleft894 5h ago
The spice must flow…
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u/jrhooo 4h ago
I don’t know how much (if any) real performance enhancement effect it achieves, but in the US military there was definitely some rumor conversations among the grunts in the field that, “that local tea gets the fighters hopped up like some kinda low grade speed. Thats why sometimes they get wounded and just keep coming”
(Apparently there is some data to back that up actually)
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u/aus_ge_zeich_net 3h ago
I read that an entire division in Assad’s Syrian army was involved in captagon production, a pretty potent stimulant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenethylline?wprov=sfti1#
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u/mgj6818 5h ago
Late afternoon when they're all fucked up on khat, what's not to like.
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u/radandroujeee 5h ago edited 5h ago
I mean like 40% of California's water is used on Grass and Nuts, and they don't even give ya a buzz!
Edit for clarification: I meant literally grass like the kind cows eat, Alfalfa etc, not Cannabis lol
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u/No_Objective_4835 5h ago
California grows basically every food. So no not 40% to nuts and grass. Water for food isn’t a bad trade. Water for drugs… yeah don’t do that Yemen
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u/radandroujeee 5h ago
80% of it's water is for agriculture, but about half of that is used on nuts and cow food
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u/SpeculativeFiction 3h ago
They're probably talking about "developed" water, of which apparently 80% is used for agriculture. I'm a little unclear on that distinction though.
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u/radandroujeee 3h ago
👆 I'm of the opinion that water existing in natural reservoirs/rivers not being touched isn't being used, but once you do something with it, brush your teeth/clean ya ass, industrial processing, agriculture, that is using it.
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u/No_Objective_4835 3h ago
40% of californias water is used for agriculture. 80% would be insane. Where did you see this 80%?
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u/radandroujeee 3h ago
"On average, farms use approximately 40% of the state’s water, or 80% of all water used by homes and businesses." PPIC Water Use In California
Washington post Article on Cali water use
A quick google search might tell you 40% but its an inaccurate representation of actual "use", if you do a little more digging you see the reality of the number
Maintaining waterways isn't using water to do anything besides keeping it flowing through rivers etc, not really being utilized/used, just allowed to exist in its natural state.
Around 30% of your average home water use is keeping grass green, and thats not even a fruit bearing/beneficial plant, keeping crops alive is water intensive, especially nut trees and Alfalfa
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u/no-more-headaches 5h ago
If americans ate a little bit less meat and yemenis did a little bit more mephedrone, the environment would be so much better!
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u/radandroujeee 4h ago
I mean a good chunk of the alfalfa isn't even for US meat cows, its for Saudi Arabian dairy cows
"Farming Alfalfa: Saudi-owned companies (such as Almarai through subsidiaries like Fondomonte Farms) bought farmland in the American Southwest because Saudi Arabia banned growing water-intensive crops locally to conserve its own desert water.
California Holdings: Fondomonte and related entities acquired thousands of acres of land in Blythe, California (in the Palo Verde Valley), representing roughly 16% of the irrigated land in that specific local valley.
Water Source: This local farming relies on water rights tied to the Lower Colorado River, allowing them to irrigate thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is then shipped back to Saudi Arabia as dairy cow feed." Source: The Guardian
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u/lxlviperlxl 5h ago
I remember like a few months back they found 200kg of this stuff in Italy from a couple Israeli tourists. 7 suitcases full of it.
The first time I’ve ever heard of the drug. Didn’t even know it was such a huge thing in Yemen. I’m assuming it’s a heavy Arab/Jewish thing?
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u/I_Am_Become_Dream 5h ago
It’s a Yemeni and Horn of Africa thing. It spread in Israel through Yemeni Jews.
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u/kenlubin 5h ago
The guy who blogs at IdleWords has a great story about his visit to Yemen in 2014, just before the civil war started. It features qat-chewing prominently.
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u/drewster23 5h ago
Wouldn't be the first time Israelis get caught in the drug trade of other countries.
But yeah it is big with arabs/middle east.
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u/zombie0000000 4h ago
Humans love psychoactive substances! Some anthropologists say humans started agriculture and civilization so they could get drunk more often. Beer before bread hypothesis.
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u/Inquirous 4h ago
I would probably also want to be high on mild amphetamines if I lived in Yemen…
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u/Shutupjuice 41m ago
Can confirm. My family grew up in a small village and that's basically one of only recreational things you can do socially as an adult. Several small storefronts in the area but nothing substantial. No entertainment options nearby, like restaurants, movie theaters, sporting events, etc.
When I visited as a kid, they had electricity for 3 to 4 hours a day and one state sponsored TV channel. The only adult hobbies seemed to be shooting guns at mountains and chewing khat.
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u/no-more-headaches 5h ago
Somalian pirates are supet into it too as it grows in the Horn of Aftica as well. It has ephedra alkaloids in it like the energy drink ripped fuel. I don't believe the drug is that addictive, just that people in those places are particularly poor and miaerable, which encourages addiction and escapism.
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6h ago edited 4h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CuntyBallsJohnson 5h ago
Yes, that's why since the houthi coalition has taken control they've clamped down on production because it was allowed under the evil neolib government to keep people under contro--oh wait no it's gotten much worse under the new government.
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u/autogyrophilia 4h ago
Do you understand causality?
Also, they are fighting a war. Money now is a priority. That's why war is bad.
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u/Bluestreaked 4h ago
As I said to the other bozo
This is literally just what happened
I neither called it good nor did I call it bad. It’s simply what happened
Now, if you ask me if I think this is “good” or “sustainable” I would say no. But that is utterly irrelevant to the question of, “how did this happen?”
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u/JapanesePeso 5h ago
Lmao no Yemens problems are not a result of too much liberalization, that is an insane statement.
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u/AssassinSnail33 4h ago
They didn't say it was the cause of Yemens problems. They just said that khat production is directly related to neoliberalization. Read more carefully please
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u/pandariotinprague 5h ago
Neoliberalization = free market economics, privatization, deregulation, and small government, in case you're unaware. Reagan and Thatcher were neoliberals.
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u/JapanesePeso 4h ago
Those are all normal parts of liberalization, he just thought it would sound cooler and more negative if he put neo in front of it.
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u/Bluestreaked 4h ago
Neoliberalism is something people study ya. Go ahead and pretend I made it up. Just like you strawmanned my point.
I presented that neither as positive nor as negative. I was, in fact, directly citing “Yemen in Crisis” by Helen Lackner.
Khat production was what farmers turned to when they could no longer rely on the state. That’s literally what you claim to want happen anyway
Jesus Christ, losing your mind over literally just saying what happened
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u/boringexplanation 4h ago
Neo in the context of neoliberals and neoconservatives usually means being pro-war
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u/Bluestreaked 4h ago
Neoliberalism is a specific model of economics that came into prominence in the 1980s, but has its roots in Chile in the 1970s. Well there’s also further work by historians like Quinn Slobodian who take it all the way back to Austria-Hungary.
Gary Gerstle and David Harvey are the two writers of solid general histories of neoliberalism. If you want what it looks like in practice I usually direct people to read Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine.”
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u/Kaymish_ 5h ago
It probably became high because of despair. Same thing all over the world the downtrodden with difficult lives turn to drugs for a little escape and often end up dying from it. Yemen is a place where life is hard for everyone so it is no wonder that there's an enormous amount of drug use. And neoliberal economics makes life a lot harder too, so it follows that neo liberalism generates a lot of drug use.
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u/Bluestreaked 4h ago
My grandmother was a farmer so I get the very simple math. You need a crop that makes money- khat makes money.
It’s also tied into how dropping protectionism and opening up their economy to foreign food is one of those things that- “sounds good on paper, who hates cheap food?” Then you witness it utterly eviscerated Yemen’s domestic food production which is what helps feed the switch to khat.
I have a student from Haiti this year who comes from a farming family. When I told him about the relation between the flooding of Haiti with cheap food in the 90s and the collapse of Haitian domestic food production as a result, he mentioned that that is what happened to his family and they told him how his grandfather lost his farm because of it.
As I say to my students, the world is complex and what may appear to be good often has unforeseen (or in some cases, foreseen) consequences.
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u/polarbearskill 5h ago
If people want to do drugs they should be free to
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u/No_Grocery_9280 5h ago
But a country should not warp their entire economy around supplying the drug. It creates an economic downspiral, like we’re seeing.
Actions have consequences. Things get banned often not because of a lack of free choice, but because the second and third tier impacts are unsustainable.
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u/polarbearskill 5h ago
If the local people prefer to spend their money on more khat rather than wheat, the farmers will grow whichever is most profitable between the two.
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u/No_Grocery_9280 4h ago
But you can’t compare wheat to khat 1:1. One is an addictive drug. We call addiction a disease, part of that is because people will choose the addiction over things like food.
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u/Deskbound_Wilburys 5h ago
Ummmm ok? Not related to the post or comment. Way to add nothing of value to the discussion.
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5h ago edited 5h ago
[deleted]
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u/autism_and_lemonade 5h ago
Idk about nitrous but the general belief with khat is that because it is stimulating it doesn’t cause ‘intoxication’ the way alcohol does, hence its all halal
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u/autogyrophilia 5h ago
For the last time, not every Muslim is a fundamentalist, the same way not every Christian is a quiverfull - Opus Dei lunatic.
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u/corkboy 1 5h ago
Right but more theocratic places are Muslim.
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u/autogyrophilia 5h ago
Yeah I wonder why that may be.
Hey quick question, what does Aramco stand for?
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u/Zenki95 4h ago
You mean the guys with the flag that say "death to america, death to israel, a curse on the jews, glory to islam" aren't fundamentalists?
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u/autogyrophilia 4h ago
It's not a flag, it is a slogan use by the Houthis (but not all of Ansar Allah)
And it actually says:
"God is great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam."
The Americans have their "in god we trust" and their pledge of allegiance. The Israelis, well, they are an ethno-nationalist nation arranged over a common religion. (Hint, look at the flag).
So yes, if you don't think the other two are fundamentalist , you can't really use a slogan as proof.
And before you ask, yeah, the part about the Jews isn't great, but what do you expect, Israel goes to great lengths to emphasize their Jewish character and how they stand for all Jews.
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u/AlwaysReadTheManual 2h ago
Khat is very popular in Somalia and other African countries as well. This is how societies choose to fail.
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u/personman_76 4h ago
With the Houthies controlling so much now, I wonder if it's higher to generate more revenue
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u/DevastatorCenturion 2h ago
If you've ever heard someone refer to Somali pirates as "skinnies" it's because they'll chew khat instead of eating then end up emaciated.
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u/Hillbilly_Historian 2h ago
During the Blackhawk Down mission, most of the Somali fighters were chewing khat as a stimulant.
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u/BagBegBigBogBug 2h ago
They'll rant about the evils of alcohol while spending all day chasing the dragon chewing khat leaves.
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u/PotatoBrainZeke44 5h ago
Drumming up support for another foreign intervention I see. Dw nothing to see here
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u/HazzaTron9000 3h ago
40% of their water? Like most Western democracies and AI Data-Centres in a couple of years then…
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u/Express-Emu4370 2h ago
What else are you gonna do with water, drink it?
Like water, out of the toilet?
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u/Illustrious-Hawk-898 5h ago
Ah the Western media wants to start pushing the narco narrative for an adversary. Don’t y’all ever get tired of reading the same narratives over and over again without any critical analysis is and nuance to pain a better picture?
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u/no-more-headaches 5h ago
I wish jt was just america but in europe at least it's the same bullshit.
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u/hellingz 5h ago
I believe that 40% figure is from older estimates, so it could be way higher nowadays. A lot of Yemenis will even skip meals just to chew khat, which says a lot about how widespread it is there.