DAR ES SALAAM, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's Drugs Control and Enforcement Authority (DCEA) said on Monday a new drug called Fentanyl, which is 50 times stronger than heroin, has entered into the east African nation, pausing more risks to users.
Rodgers Sianga, DCEA Commissioner General, said the sedative drug was currently being used by drug addicts who mixed it with heroin "to make them feel more pleasure than using heroin alone".
"The situation in Tanzania is still not good and we all have to join forces if the war against drugs has to be won," he told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on HIV and AIDS in the capital Dodoma.
He said fighting drugs was proving hard because very influential people were behind the drugs syndicate.
Sianga gave a graphic example saying one of the influential drug dealers attempted to bribe him with 400,000 U.S. dollars in order to drop drugs charges against him.
Sianga added that the prominent person he declined to identify for investigative reasons also wanted to bribe DCEA's lawyer Edwin Kakolaki with another 200,000 U.S. dollars to help disrupt the drugs case facing him.
The DCEA chief told the lawmakers that despite the attempts to bribe him, the prominent drug dealer and his colleagues were arrested in Mwanza region in December last year.
Sianga said drug traffickers were now investing in clandestine industries to produce new psychotropic substances as an alternative means to the missing cocaine and heroin in the market.
Peter Musisi, DCEA Prevention and Treatment Commissioner, said: "We have controlled importation of illicit drugs especially in mainland Tanzania."
In February 2017, President John Magufuli called on Tanzanians to support the ongoing war on drugs while cautioning against acts that could undermine efforts by the government to eliminate narcotics trade and abuse.
Magufuli explained that the Drug Control and Enforcement Act No.5 of 2015 stipulated that the fight must be spearheaded by the government.