Opium In Afghanistan

In dozens of mountain hamlets in the remote corners of Afghanistan, opium addiction has become entrenched throughout entire families, from toddlers to grandfathers. Afghanistan currently supplies nearly all of the world's opium, which is the key ingredient of producing heroin, and while most of the crop is exported, enough is left behind to create a vicious circle of addiction. Afghanistan has somewhere around 200,000 opium and heroin addicts, compared to the 50,000 or so current addicts in the United States according to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services and a 2005 survey by the United Nations.
Rates of individuals becoming addicts are supposed to increase, which in turn widens the window of war and poverty in Afghanistan. Unlike the United States, the close-knit nature of these communities of the Middle East makes these addictions a family affair. Instead of passing from one teenager to another, the habit passes from mother to daughter, father to son, and it turns entire villages into a landscape of depredation. Most families have pawned their belongings in order to pay for more drugs.

The country’s few drug rehabilitation centers are in the large cities far from these villages where opium addiction is at its worst. Even those who do seek help from these rehabs are often unable to get the help they need. A drug clinic in Takhar providence has a waiting list of over 2,000 people and only 30 beds. This leaves the villagers to drown in their opium addictions. They begin taking opium when they were sick, relying on it to for the anesthetic properties; opium is used to make morphine. In many of these small villages, the few shops in these towns do not even sell aspirin, which leaves sick individuals with smoking opium as the only solution. Its is common for parents or grandparents to blow opium smoke in their baby’s faces when they cry or get hurt, and from there it’s a downward cycle to a life addicted to opiates.