When our sports star play ball with a 'bhang'

It’s an open secret that many Kenyan sportsmen smoke what Rastafarians call the ‘holy herb,’ a plat that is neither a herb nor holy

Some will add miraa and booze to the equation, never mind that being arrested for suffocating your lungs with marijuana can earn you a cool 14 years in the slammer.

The Nairobian spoke to former and current players about the rampant use of bhang by sportsmen. Shockingly, 30 per cent of the sportsmen interviewed confessed to having smoked ‘bangi,’ or chewed miraa or mogoka at some point when they were actively involved in sports.

In a classic case of peer pressure, some of the players admit they were ‘recruited’ into the ‘brotherhood’ to keep up with influential team members. Apparently, the vice is so deeply-rooted that one who doesn’t indulge could easily become an ‘outsider’ within a team. What’s more, the government is not totally in the dark.

In May 2013, a probe committee chaired by Prof Moni Wekesa asked the government to act with speed to weed out substance abuse in sports.

“We talked to a number of footballers and were shocked that most of them smoke bhang. It is not just the players, but coaches as well.

There are no strong structures and information to address the vice. We have no tests carried out on these players and they easily get away with it,” Wekesa told reporters at a news conference while handing over his committee’s report to the Cabinet Secretary for Sports, Culture and Arts, Hassan Wario.

An active soccer player that we spoke to says pressure of life and frustrations in Nairobi are some of the reasons they resort to the drug, especially those who come from rural mashinani.

Chewing miraa

“I signed up for Gor Mahia straight from the village. I had never played top-flight football before then. I had to keep up with the day to day living in Nairobi and most of the time kept the company of colleagues who were conversant with the city and were arguably very good players at the time,” confessed the one-time footballer.

He later started chewing miraa ‘just to pass time with friends’, but before he knew it, he and his friend, a fullback, were hooked and in the process lost their concentration on the pitch.

A locally-based rugby player we spoke to said: “I prefer smoking weed to taking alcohol because I don’t want to wake up with a crazy hangover that would put me in bad books with my coach.”

Another former upcountry-based club defender chews miraa and mogoka almost every weekend. He doesn’t see anything wrong with it since a number of players also use the popular green gold of Meru.

Football Kenya Federation’s Technical Director Jacob Ghost Mulee, explains that during his days as a coach, he accepted the challenges that various players faced. He would invite experts from the International Doping Committee to educate players on the effects of using banned substances.

“For a long time, a number of players didn’t know that chewing miraa could be detrimental to their careers until boxer David Munyasia was banned by the International Olympic Committee.

I thank God because while at the helm of the national team, I was lucky to have a sober squad made up of professionals, who knew what they were doing,” said Mulee.

Constant education

“Players who deliberately smoke and take substances that contain banned chemical ingredients are aware that whatever they are doing is wrong. They still do it anyway. It’s a very sad situation. They have been taught and constantly educated on what to avoid. Where is their moral discipline and personal responsibility?” wondered Mulee

Catherine Mbau, a counselling psychologist, argues that a person who knowingly uses harmful substances suffers from delusion. Many of them, she says, would prefer the ‘cure’ they get from the substances they take.

“Once one is addicted, the system recognises the substances as a necessity and they can no longer function properly without them. They may feel grandiose, but they eventually lose their career as a result of substance abuse and addiction, and tend to focus more on memories of their hey days. That is all they think and talk about,” said Catherine.

Football Kenya Federation’s National Vice Chairman Robert Asembo says the war on drug and substance abuse among the country’s sportsmen must be fought collectively.

Perhaps the easiest way to begin is through a police a crackdown on soccer fans who smoke bhang openly in the stadium, and even have the audacity to borrow ‘moto’ from the police.