From Drug Abuse to Organized Crime: Addressing Youth Vulnerability and Criminal Networks in Cameroon

By Antem Anthony

Executive Summary

The emergence of “Cailloux, Kayu, Kailloux,”, a local street drug, as a new synthetic street drug marks a concerning shift in Cameroon’s illicit drug landscape, signalling the evolution of drug markets from the abuse of traditional substances such as cannabis and tramadol towards more potent and less understood synthetic drugs. Although systematic national data on the prevalence, composition, and trafficking patterns of Cailloux remain limited, some media reports have alleged that human bones may be used in its production, although publicly available forensic evidence remains limited. The drug is reported to sell at relatively low prices, contributing to its accessibility among vulnerable populations. This trend reflects a broader transformation in the country’s drug economy and presents an urgent challenge for policymakers, requiring stronger evidence generation, improved surveillance, and coordinated national action. High levels of youth unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, school dropout, exposure to conflict, and limited access to mental health and rehabilitation services create admissibility conditions for young people that criminal groups readily exploit. This policy brief argues that containing the Cailloux phenomenon requires an integrated approach that simultaneously addresses demand, supply, and the structural drivers of youth vulnerability. It recommends the following priority actions, amongst others: officially recognizing Cailloux as an emerging national drug and security threat through a dedicated or consolidated national strategy; establishing or embedding cailloux into a national early warning and forensic surveillance system to identify and monitor emerging synthetic drugs; strengthening intelligence-led investigations and community actors to dismantle criminal networks involved in the production, trafficking, and financing of illicit drug markets.

Key Messages

• The limited official recognition of Cailloux as an emerging synthetic-drug threat may constrain surveillance, research, and coordinated policy responses to its social, economic, and security impacts.
• Organized criminal networks increasingly exploit the drug’s production, trafficking, and street-level distribution to generate illicit profits, expand their territorial influence, and recruit vulnerable young people into criminal activities.
• High levels of youth unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, school dropout, exposure to conflict, and limited access to mental health and rehabilitation services create admissibility conditions for young people that criminal groups readily exploit.
• This cycle not only deprives Cameroon of its demographic dividend but also fuels violence, insecurity, and long-term socioeconomic costs.

Introduction

Although the WHO defines a drug as any substance that, when taken or administered into one’s system, affects mental processes, e.g. perception, consciousness, cognition or mood and emotions, the recognition and chemical composition of Cailloux remains inadequately documented. Even though there exists, a comprehensive framework for the prevention and suppression of cannabis cultivation and a National Strategic Plan to Combat Drugs for the 2024-2030, the emergence and proliferation of Cailloux constitutes a growing peace and security concern. Unlike traditional drugs such as cannabis or tramadol, synthetic drugs often evolve more rapidly, their composition changes frequently, and their production networks can be harder to monitor and regulate. This makes timely detection and response particularly important.

• Understanding the Cailloux Phenomenon

1. Conceptual clarification: Cailloux the French word for “small stones” or “pebbles” is the street name increasingly used in Cameroon to describe a new synthetic psychoactive substance that typically appears as small crystalline or rock-like particles, deriving its name from its physical resemblance to tiny stones rather than from any known chemical composition. Although law enforcement agencies, health professionals, community organizations, and media reports have documented its growing presence, the precise chemical composition of Cailloux remains largely unknown. Available evidence suggests that it may not be a single substance but rather a generic street label for different synthetic drug mixtures whose composition varies by producer and location, thereby increasing the risks of overdose, poisoning, unpredictable behavioral effects, and long-term health complications. The drug is commonly consumed by smoking it in improvised pipes or by mixing it with cannabis or tobacco, although other methods of administration may exist depending on local formulations. Its relatively low cost, widespread availability, ease of concealment, and decentralized street-level distribution have made it particularly accessible to unemployed youth, students, and other vulnerable groups. These characteristics, combined with its reputation for producing an intense but short-lived psychoactive effect, have contributed to its rapid diffusion among young people through peer networks, social media, and informal drug markets.
2. Key localities of prevalence: Reports consistently identify the South West Region as one of the earliest and most affected regions, where the drug has been associated with increasing youth delinquency, public disorder, violent behavior, and petty crime. Similar reports have emerged from Douala, where densely populated neighborhoods, transport hubs, ports, and informal settlements provide favorable conditions for distribution, while Yaoundé has witnessed increasing street-level sales and consumption, particularly in low-income communities and areas frequented by unemployed youth. Although systematic national surveillance remains limited, emerging reports indicate that other urban centres including Garoua, Bertoua, Limbe, Buea, Ngaoundéré, and Kribi may also be experiencing growing circulation of the drug.
3. Trafficking routes/corridors: Available intelligence suggests that trafficking follows Cameroon’s principal commercial and transport corridors, with drugs moving from coastal entry points around Douala through the Douala–Yaoundé–Bafoussam corridor and onward to Bamenda and neighboring towns, while additional routes may connect border regions with Nigeria, Chad, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon through increasingly decentralized criminal networks that rely on motorcycle transport, informal commercial channels, and youth street dealers.

• Emergence from Drug Abuse to Organized Crime

The rapid emergence of Cailloux in Cameroon represents far more than a public health concern; it signals the evolution of an emerging criminal economy in which synthetic drugs increasingly serve as both a commodity and a mechanism for recruiting vulnerable young people into organized crime. Rather than operating as isolated cases of substance abuse, the production, trafficking, and retail distribution of Cailloux exhibit many of the characteristics of organized criminal enterprises, including decentralized supply chains, territorial control, youth recruitment networks, financial laundering, and diversification into multiple illicit markets.

The pathway from drug use to criminality is often progressive and self-reinforcing: initial experimentation frequently driven by curiosity, peer influence, trauma, or socio-economic hardship can lead to regular consumption, addiction, and dependency. As dependency deepens, many users experience financial distress and social exclusion, making them increasingly susceptible to recruitment by criminal groups that offer drugs, money, protection, or a sense of belonging in exchange for participation in illegal activities. Consequently, many young people transition from consumers to street-level dealers, couriers, recruiters, and eventually active participants in organized criminal networks, reinforcing a cycle in which addiction becomes both a driver and a product of criminal enterprise. Criminal organizations have developed business models that maximize profits while minimizing operational risks by exploiting this vulnerability.

Synthetic drugs such as Cailloux are reportedly imported through regional trafficking networks or manufactured locally using relatively inexpensive precursor chemicals and clandestine production methods that are difficult for authorities to detect. Distribution is intentionally decentralized, relying on young people as low-cost and expendable distributors operating in schools, universities, transport hubs, entertainment venues, markets, and densely populated neighbourhoods where demand is high and law enforcement presence is often limited. Addicted users are frequently exploited as dealers to finance their own consumption, creating a self-sustaining cycle in which victims become perpetrators while simultaneously recruiting new consumers into the market. Criminal proceeds are subsequently laundered through cash-intensive businesses, informal commercial activities, transport services, mobile money transactions, and other legitimate enterprises, allowing organized networks to conceal profits and finance expansion into additional criminal ventures. As these networks grow in sophistication and financial capacity, they increasingly diversify into gang violence, armed robbery, kidnapping for ransom, cybercrime, weapons trafficking, prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, and prison-based recruitment, where incarcerated offenders establish relationships with more sophisticated criminal actors before re-entering society. These interconnected criminal markets reinforce one another, strengthening the resilience and profitability of organized crime while contributing to rising violence, corruption, insecurity, and weakened community cohesion. Recognizing this continuum is essential for policy development, as effective responses must move beyond conventional drug control strategies to simultaneously dismantle criminal networks, disrupt illicit financial flows, strengthen community resilience, expand youth employment and education opportunities, improve mental health and rehabilitation services, and address the underlying structural conditions that enable organized crime to thrive.

The emergence of Cailloux illustrates the evolving nature of illicit drug markets and organized crime in Cameroon. Addressing the threat requires moving beyond isolated drug-control measures toward a comprehensive approach that combines public health interventions, prevention, law enforcement, rehabilitation, and expanded economic opportunities for young people.

• Policy and Institutional Gaps in Cameroon’s response

Cameroon’s response to the emerging threat posed by Cailloux and other synthetic drugs remains constrained by significant policy, institutional, operational, public health, and community-level gaps that limit the country’s ability to prevent, detect, and disrupt the evolving drug economy.

At the policy level, existing drug control frameworks continue to focus predominantly on conventional narcotics. National drug strategies have not kept pace with the rapidly changing nature of drug production and trafficking, while the absence of an integrated early warning system for detecting new substances delays timely policy and operational responses. These challenges are compounded by inadequate forensic laboratory capacity for chemical identification and toxicological analysis, as well as weak national data collection, surveillance, and research systems, resulting in significant evidence gaps that hinder informed policymaking.

Within the law enforcement sector, responses remain largely reactive and fragmented, characterized by limited intelligence sharing among security agencies, insufficient financial and criminal investigations targeting trafficking networks, and an operational emphasis on arresting users and low-level street dealers rather than dismantling the organized criminal groups that finance, coordinate, and profit from the illicit drug trade.

From a public health perspective, treatment and rehabilitation services remain inadequate to address the growing burden of drug dependency. Cameroon has relatively few specialized rehabilitation facilities, limited access to evidence-based addiction treatment and psychosocial support, and almost no comprehensive recovery programmes specifically designed for adolescents and young adults, leaving many affected individuals without pathways to recovery and increasing the likelihood of relapse and continued criminal exploitation. At the community level, prevention efforts remain equally limited. Public awareness of the dangers associated with synthetic drugs remains low, school-based drug prevention and life-skills education programmes are insufficiently developed, and many parents, teachers, religious leaders, and community organizations lack the knowledge and resources required to identify early signs of substance abuse, support at-risk youth, and prevent recruitment into criminal networks.

Conclusion and policy pathways

The emergence of Cailloux illustrates the evolving nature of illicit drug markets and organized crime in Cameroon. Addressing the threat requires moving beyond isolated drug-control measures toward a comprehensive approach that combines public health interventions, prevention, law enforcement, rehabilitation, and expanded economic opportunities for young people. The brief therefore concludes with the following recommendations;

I – Officially Recognize Cailloux as an Emerging National Drug and Security Threat. Led by the Prime Minister’s Office in collaboration with the Ministries of Public Health, Public Security, Defence, Justice, Secondary Education, Higher Education, Youth Affairs, and Social Affairs, the Government of Cameroon should formally designate and embed Cailloux and other emerging synthetic drugs into existing policy frameworks as a national public health and security priority.

II – Launch a Nationwide “Know Cailloux” Prevention and Public Awareness Campaign. In coordination with civil society organizations, traditional and religious leaders, educational institutions, media organizations, and the private sector the Government should launch a sustained national awareness campaign to educate the public on the dangers of Cailloux and other synthetic drugs.

III – Establish a National Early Warning and Drug Intelligence System. In order to routinely monitor and analyse new synthetic substances, the Government should establish a national early warning system for new psychoactive substances coordinated by the Ministry of Public Health and the National Public Health Laboratory, in partnership with law enforcement agencies, customs, universities, hospitals, and forensic laboratories.

IV – Shift from User-Centred Enforcement to Intelligence-Led Disruption of Criminal Networks. Law enforcement agencies should prioritize dismantling organized criminal groups responsible for financing, producing, trafficking, and distributing Cailloux rather than focusing primarily on arresting users and low-level street dealers.

V – Strengthen Prevention, Treatment, and Community Resilience to Protect Youth. Government officials should develop and implement an integrated national youth protection programme that combines prevention, rehabilitation, and socio-economic empowerment