How Lyimo avoided the cannabis trap while his friends were caught in it

Aretas Lyimo says his dream of becoming a priest and the religious upbringing he received as a young man helped protect him from cannabis use while studying at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Years later, as commissioner general of Tanzania’s Drug Control and Enforcement Authority, Lyimo remembers watching fellow students become caught up in drug use, disrupting their studies and destroying their ambitions. He says it is especially painful when drug-control operations lead to students being arrested.

As a first-year student, Lyimo lived in the Kijitonyama hostels. He said the area brought students into contact with different entertainment districts in Dar es Salaam, including Mwenge, where many young people at the time used and sold cannabis. Students would leave campus in the evenings or at weekends and enter those surroundings.

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At that hostel, after leaving campus in the evening or sometimes at weekends, students would go into the streets, to Mwenge, where at that time there were many young people who used cannabis.

Lyimo said those conditions did not lead him into drug use. Before university, he had been active in church and studied at a seminary while preparing to serve as a priest. "I served in the church, then I studied at a seminary. Even when I joined university, I still had those religious values that this is wrong, this is wrong," he said.

He later witnessed the consequences more closely when two students sharing his room began using drugs. One came from a wealthy family. His father owned buses and gave him enough money for university expenses, but Lyimo said the money gradually enabled a lifestyle centered on entertainment, including alcohol and later drugs.

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I served in the church, then I studied at a seminary. Even when I joined university, I still had those religious values that this is wrong, this is wrong.