Khat is a good deal stupider as drug-of-choice in Yemen than alcohol would be. It's a crop that takes up tons of the scarce arable land and even more scarce water in a very poor country in which 17% of income is spent on khat.
Then there’s it’s relationship with sexual assault and date rape as well.
For example: Yemen has 35 cars per 1000 people to the US's 797. Yemen would have to leapfrog through several stages of development for drunken driving to become a blip on their public health radar.
Half of that country currently doesn't have clean water, and they're draining their acquifers dry … to grow khat. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...
Cholera outbreaks and a water-scarcity exacerbated civil war are simply a different class of problem.