Tweet
Afghan drug addiction twice global average: UN
Afghan drug addiction twice global average: UN
(AFP) – 6 hours ago
KABUL — Eight percent of Afghans suffer from drug addiction, a rate twice the global average and a "major" growing problem for the world's leading narcotic producer, a survey warned Monday.
Issued by the Afghan government and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the report found around one million people in the country aged 15 to 64 had drug addictions, often to opium and heroin.
"After three decades of war-related trauma, unlimited availability of cheap narcotics and limited access to treatment have created a major, and growing, addiction problem in Afghanistan," UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said in a press statement.
"It's a bleak picture," said Robert Watkins the second-most senior UN official in Afghanistan, told a news conference, releasing the report in Kabul.
Afghanistan is the leading producer of opium, the raw material for making heroin, and the survey found addiction could spread because drug users in north and south Afghanistan gave opium to their children.
The study also found that in the last five years the number of regular opium users had jumped 53 percent and the number of heroin users doubled as the drug industry boomed.
"In Afghanistan the growth of addiction to narcotics has followed the same hyperbolic pattern of opium production," Costa said.
The report added that only 10 percent of drug users surveyed had received any kind of drug treatment, even though 90 percent felt they needed it.
Drug addiction treatment centres available in 21 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces could provide treatment for only a little more than 10,000 addicts, Ibrahim Azhar, a deputy counternarcotics minister told reporters.
Afghans were also addicted to cannabis, painkillers and tranquillisers, taking drugs "as a kind of self-medication against the hardships of life" in the war-torn country, which is battling a Taliban-led insurgency.
Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world's opium, mainly in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar in the south and Farah in the southwest, a crop estimated worth 2.8 billion dollars a year.
(AFP) – 6 hours ago
KABUL — Eight percent of Afghans suffer from drug addiction, a rate twice the global average and a "major" growing problem for the world's leading narcotic producer, a survey warned Monday.
Issued by the Afghan government and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the report found around one million people in the country aged 15 to 64 had drug addictions, often to opium and heroin.
"After three decades of war-related trauma, unlimited availability of cheap narcotics and limited access to treatment have created a major, and growing, addiction problem in Afghanistan," UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said in a press statement.
"It's a bleak picture," said Robert Watkins the second-most senior UN official in Afghanistan, told a news conference, releasing the report in Kabul.
Afghanistan is the leading producer of opium, the raw material for making heroin, and the survey found addiction could spread because drug users in north and south Afghanistan gave opium to their children.
The study also found that in the last five years the number of regular opium users had jumped 53 percent and the number of heroin users doubled as the drug industry boomed.
"In Afghanistan the growth of addiction to narcotics has followed the same hyperbolic pattern of opium production," Costa said.
The report added that only 10 percent of drug users surveyed had received any kind of drug treatment, even though 90 percent felt they needed it.
Drug addiction treatment centres available in 21 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces could provide treatment for only a little more than 10,000 addicts, Ibrahim Azhar, a deputy counternarcotics minister told reporters.
Afghans were also addicted to cannabis, painkillers and tranquillisers, taking drugs "as a kind of self-medication against the hardships of life" in the war-torn country, which is battling a Taliban-led insurgency.
Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world's opium, mainly in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar in the south and Farah in the southwest, a crop estimated worth 2.8 billion dollars a year.
Comment