Between Pleasure and Punishment: The Moral Vocabulary of Drug Use in Nigerian Digital Spaces

Abstract

Drug use among Nigerian youth is increasingly treated as both a public health crisis and a moral failing. This study examines how the crisis is narrated in digital spaces through slang, sentiment, and moral language that not only reflect consumption patterns but shape them. We analyzed 5,240 text samples: Twitter posts (n = 3,100), Nairaland threads (n = 920), and lyrics from 45 hip-hop and street-pop tracks (n = 1,220 lines), collected between January 2021 and March 2024. Using targeted keywords including “high”, “loud,” “colorado,” “skushi,” “roachies,” “tramadol,” and “codeine.” Using sentiment analysis (VADER), an adapted moral foundations tagging approach, and close qualitative coding, we traced how different drugs are framed across class, gender, and emotional registers. Stimulants such as “loud” and “tramadol” are often aligned with masculinity, performance, and aspiration, while sedatives like “codeine” and “rohypnol” appear more often in narratives of feminine withdrawal, vulnerability, or social regulation. Imported substances (e.g., “Canadian Loud,” “SK”) evoke status and trend-savviness; locally mixed drugs (e.g., “monkey tail,” “gutter water”) mark degradation, addiction, or spiritual decline. First-person disclosures carry tones of defiance or fatalism, while third-party accounts invoke disgust, fear, and betrayal of purity or religious authority. These moral framings do not merely describe behavior; rather, they regulate it. If public health is to be effective, it must move beyond condemnation and engage with the lived vocabularies of those it seeks to reach.