Word: opium
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...that nearly 4% of Afghan adults use some kind of drug. "This goes beyond returnees," says Bayer. "The results have gone beyond expectations; no one expected use to be so high." Bayer says she has visited villages in the north of Afghanistan where the entire population is addicted to opium. Mothers in carpet weaving districts take opium to ease muscle aches earned from spending long days at the loom, and give it to their children to keep them quiet. Says Bayer: "There is no education, no awareness of the harm that opium causes. People here have been traumatized. If they...
...source of 92% of the world's heroin, Afghanistan's opium farmers are easily blamed for the ready availability of the drug on the streets of Europe and Asia (most heroin in the U.S. still comes from opium crops in Latin America). But Afghans have historically seen themselves as producers of opium, not consumers, citing a Koranic loophole that prohibits intoxicants but fails to proscribe their production...
...heroin addicts in the capital city, Kabul, have doubled to 14,000 since 2003. According to the first ever nationwide survey on drug use in Afghanistan by the UNODC, there are nearly 50,000 heroin users in the country as a whole, and an additional 150,000 who use opium. "For those in the West, that may not look like a lot," says Fatimie. "But for me it's a big number. It's a warning...
When the Taliban came to power in 1996, according to the DEA, Noorzai reached the peak of his influence. While Taliban leader Mullah Omar's tribal background is not known, he was always reliably supported by the Noorzai tribe. Even when the ruling Taliban was cracking down on the opium trade, Noorzai's closeness to the regime allowed Noorzai to become one of just four big traffickers permitted to grow and process poppies, according to Jamil Karzai, a current member of the Afghan parliament and a second cousin of President Hamid Karzai's. In 1997, the DEA says, Noorzai...
...Afghanistan, a weak government has produced a security vacuum that in turn inhibits economic development and diversification, forcing impoverished farmers to grow lucrative crops like the opium poppy for cash. Any deliberate crop destruction carried out by the Afghan government often drives poor farmers to sympathize with the insurgency. Just two weeks ago, despite international pressure, President Karzai said Afghanistan would not carry out chemical spraying of poppy crops, given the intense level of opposition among farmers...