Declared Drug Crisis for Afghanistan

ANCHOR:
Afghanistan is the world's largest opium producer and exporter...but most people forget that it also has a huge drug use problem. One survey estimates there to be almost 1 million drug users in the country.

STORY:
For Naik Bakht, her life and destiny seem to revolve around her addiction. Naik feeds her children by collecting wild herbs from the mountains near their village.

[Naik Bakht, Opium Addict]:
"I have been smoking opium for eight years. I am sick. Have a look at my face, we are very poor and when we get sick we cannot afford to go to the doctor. So we use opium instead of medicine. My in-laws were addicted so I
became addicted with them."

Forty five year old Gada Mohammad, Bakht's husband, has been using opium almost all his life.

[Gada Mohammad, Opium Addict]:
"I have used opium for the past thirty years. I used to have a very good life as a farmer but when I got addicted, I sold my farmland and spent the money to buy opium. In the beginning I was too young to know the
dangers of opium. Whenever I felt unwell my father and mother who were addicted would give me a bit of opium. I used to feel relaxed when eating or smoking opium, now I can't leave this, I am addicted."

In recent years, the Afghan government has started plans to help wean addicts off opium and eradicate poppy fields.
It's also received pressure from the international community to stop poppy cultivation. Afghanistan provides the world with almost all its opium, from which heroin is made.

[Faizullah Kakar, Afghan Deputy Health Minister]:
"The use of drugs and depression has a vicious cycle relationship. When you have people with depression, they like to take drugs in order to relieve themselves, and then they get more depressed. And people who have drugs they have depression so more depression produces more drug addicts... that is how the relationship is called a vicious cycle and this is what we
see in Afghanistan and that is another aspect of the health emergency that I am talking about."

NGOs distribute clean needles and run halfway houses to help addicts kick the habit. Meanwhile the government is trying to legalise methadone to help wean addicts off the drug. But, everyone agrees the road ahead will be a hard one.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• ntd
• drugs
• afghanistan
• opium
• export
• addiction

[tpvalley]

why not let those who r addicted grow their own, enough for themselves?