According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, there were about 900,000 drug users in Afghanistan in 2010. That means about 7 percent of the adult population of 14 million is using narcotics. A vast majority take opium-based drugs, which are extraordinarily pure in Afghanistan and very cheap. Afghanistan is the world’s leading producer of opium poppy, and the
opium produced and sold here and its derivatives, including heroin, are
among the most potent on earth. About 150,000 of those addicted to opium-based
drugs are injecting heroin, according to the World Health Organization.
Unlike the situation in many countries, where H.I.V. is transmitted
primarily through sexual contact, in Afghanistan the primary
transmission is through shared needles.
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| Photo credit: Peter Nicholls/ The Times(UK) - LINK |
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| Photo credit: Ali Rafiei - LINK |
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| Poisonous substances mixed with pure heroin leave their deadly marks on the bodies of the addicts.- LINK |
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| Men inject heroin in an abandoned building in Kabul, Afghanistan on Nov 14, 2008. Photo credit: Kuni Takahashi |
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| Their bodies are covered with sores. Some can hardly walk as their feet
are raw. This man laments that he did not enjoy his life and does not
remember his childhood. He just remembers working as a migrant day and
night. And smoking drugs. - LINK |
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| In other countries, addiction might be controllable, but in Afghanistan it equals death. - LINK |
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