Once largely a social pastime, the ancient practice of chewing khat is taking on troubling dimensions.
We see wily corsairs in ragged clothing swarming out of their elusive mother ships, chewing narcotic khat while thumbing GPS phones and grappling hooks.
Never mind the social effects of an entire nation addled by the narcotic leaf khat, growing the plant could leave the country short of drinking water.
Kansas City Man Indicted for Distributing Khat A Kansas City, MO man has been indicted by a federal grand jury for distributing cathinone, a controlled substance found in graba, a dried form of khat.
June 21, 2013 - Kansas City InfoZine
Ali Mohammed in Reuters South Africa We don't want the khat to be stopped, we don't want an al Shabaab administration,demonstrator Ali Mohamed told Reuters.
Sharif Sheik Ahmed in BBC News From today onwards we have banned khat in the areas we control,Mr Ahmed said. "Dealers found in possession of khat will pay 7 million Somali shillings ($5,000) and the khat will be burned. This substance is badly influencing our people."
Ali Abdullah Saleh in Bloomberg Khat is the whiskey of Yemen,said Saleh Amid Qalan, a 32-year-old government employee, standing in a passage next to the seventh century Great Mosque, the country's oldest.