﻿Nobody knows which came first: the economic crisis tearing Greece apart or shisha, the drug now known as the “cocaine of the poor”. What everyone does accept is that shisha is a killer; and at €2 or less a hit, it is one that has come to stalk Greece, the country long on the frontline of Europe’s financial meltdown. 
“As drugs go, it is the worst. It burns your insides, it makes you aggressive and ensures that you go totally mad,” said Maria, a former heroin addict. “But it is cheap and it is easy to get, and it is what everyone is doing.” 
This drug crisis has put Athens’s health authorities, already overwhelmed by draconian cuts, under further strain. 
The drug of preference for thousands of homeless Greeks forced on to the streets by poverty and despair, shisha is described by both addicts and officials as a variant of crystal meth, whose potential to send users into a state of mindless violence is underpinned by the substances with which the synthetic drug is frequently mixed: battery acid, engine oil and even shampoo. 
Worse still, it is not only readily available but easy to make – tailor-made for a society that sees little light at the end of the tunnel.