Afghanistan is the world's top producer of opium and the illegal drug trade has helped finance the ruling Taliban. Over the past decades, millions of Afghans have fallen into drug addiction. The Taliban now claim they want to eradicate the use of narcotics. When they were in power from 1996 to 2001, the fundamentalists had banned poppy cultivation. But the intervention of US-led troops in 2001 relaunched opium production. Today, it remains permitted and is even intensifying in a country on the brink of economic collapse. Our team on the ground reports.
The rehabilitation centre in the capital Kabul has some 350 staff and can cater to about 1,000 patients. Yet it is occupied by about 3,500 drug addicts who have been brought there by the Taliban.
A handful of rehabilitation centres are run by private charities in other cities as well.Afghanistan is one of the leading producers of heroin and methamphetamine.
Most of the drugs produced are exported to the world’s black markets.The human face of Afghanistan’s drug problem is not only seen on the streets of Moscow, London or Paris, it is in the eyes of its own citizens, dependent on a daily dose of opium, heroin, cannabis, painkillers and tranquilizers.
Easy access to cheap drugs, and limited access to drug treatment, combined with three decades of war‐related trauma have resulted in problem drug‐use among almost one million Afghans, roughly 8% of the population between 15 and 64 years old. At twice the global average, this high percentage is debilitating, not only for those affected, but also for their families, communities, and the country as a whole.
Many Afghans seem to be taking drugs as a kind of self‐medication against the hardships of life. But as a result, it is causing greater misery by creating behavioral, social and health problems, as well as petty crime, traffic and workplace accidents, and loss of productivity.
Furthermore, injecting drug use, as well as trading sex for drugs, risks spreading HIV and other blood‐borne diseases. One of the most shocking statistics in this report is the number of parents who give opium to their children; as high as 50% of drug users in the north and south of the country.
This risks condemning the next generation to a life of addiction. It is also troubling to see that Afghans perceive the problem of drug use to be worsening, and that they have little recourse to help.
Only ten percent of drug users surveyed had received a form of drug treatment, although 90% of them felt that they were in need of it.
This leaves around 700,000 Afghans with no access to drug treatment ‐ and another generation on the way. Not only does drug production hold back Afghanistan’s development and threaten its security.
Drug addiction is harming Afghanistan’s health and welfare. This is another reason to reduce the supply of drugs in Afghanistan. And it calls for much greater resources for drug prevention and treatment in Afghanistan, as part of mainstream healthcare and development programmes.Illicit drug use has increased across the country, dramatically so for opium, heroin and other opiates.
In four years, the number of regular opium users in Afghanistan grew from 150,000 to approximately 230,000 ‐ a jump of 53 per cent. The numbers are even more alarming for heroin.
In 2005, the estimate of regular heroin users in the country was 50,000, compared to approximately 120,000 users in 2009, a leap of 140 per cent. Overall, the annual prevalence of regular opiate use is estimated to be 2.7 per cent of the adult population1 (between 290,000 and 360,000 persons).
Opium is by far the most commonly used opiate with an estimated prevalence of about 1.9 per cent of the adult population. Heroin prevalence is estimated to be about 1.0 per cent of the adult population and other opiates users2 are estimated to make up about 0.5 per cent of the adult population.
Overall, adult drug users are estimated to number close to one million (high estimate 940,000) people. That figure represents nearly 8 per cent of the population aged between 15 and 64.
To some extent drug use corresponds with the geographic areas of opium and cannabis production and trading.
The highest prevalence of drug use is found in the Northern and Southern regions, while the Central region has the most number of drug users in the country, up to 288,000 individuals.In terms of daily expenditure for various drugs, drug users in the Southern region were spending less for drugs, especially heroin and opium as these drugs are cheaper in that region.
Invariably, all drugs are expensive in the Central region. On the whole, drug users are financially burdened by their addiction. Heroin use caused the highest burden ($2.2 per day), followed by opium ($ 1.6) and other opiates ($1.5). Overall, the survey estimates that drug users in Afghanistan spend on average $300 million US on their drug habit every year. Another way some drug users obtain and pay for drugs is through the exchange of sexual services.
Cultural constraints and personal inhibitions led 60 per cent of respondents to deny that they ever had sex. Another 26 per cent refused to answer questions about their sexual behavior. However, 6 per cent of respondents acknowledged that they had engaged in sexual intercourse.
A considerable proportion of these users reported exchanging sexual services for money or drugs. On average, these drug users had two sexual partners in the month prior to their interview.
Most had never used a condom during penetrative sex in the previous month, and only a small number mentioned occasionally using condoms.
This finding is distressing given that many respondents who had heard of HIV did not know how the disease spreads or how to prevent its transmission.
Also worrying is the finding that although only 3 per cent of drug users who were tested said they tested positive for HIV, this self‐reported HIV status and information from HIV surveillance studies conducted among injecting drug users and other at risk population, could be the beginning of a concentrated HIV epidemic among at‐risk populations.
The average user initiated his/her drug use in Afghanistan, although, significantly, about 28 per cent of drug users began using drugs in Iran and about 9 percent in Pakistan as refugees. Among opium and heroin users, up to 40 per cent initiated their opiate use in Iran.
While numbers of women drug users are far fewer than of men, they too have defining characteristics. A typical woman drug user is more likely to be widowed or divorced, have even less education, and is more than twice as likely to not have a job during the month prior to the interview.
Largely due to the wide variety of cheap drugs available throughout Afghanistan, it is unsurprising to learn of drug users reporting using multiple substances in their lifetime and in the past 12 months. Forty per cent of the drug users had used consecutively or simultaneously two or more than two substances in the past 12 months.
More than a third had used both opium and cannabis, 18 per cent had used heroin and opium, 15 per cent had used heroin and cannabis, and 10 per cent had used opium, heroin and cannabis.
There is also considerable drug use among family members of the drug users interviewed. Opium, cannabis and heroin were the three main drugs for which the respondents mentioned regular use by at least another family member.