Opium Use Skyrocketing in Afghanistan - UN

June 21/ Eurasianet

Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer and supplier is also a country that is confronting an alarming addiction problem, a new survey published by the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime shows. At least 1 million Afghans, or roughly 8 percent of the population, are drug addicts, the survey found.

At a June 21 news conference to mark the report’s release, Deputy Minister of Counter Narcotics Mohammed Ibrahim Azhar said the number of opium users had increased by 53 percent since the last UN survey was conducted in 2005. The number of heroin users jumped 140 percent.

One place where addiction is growing the fastest is within Afghanistan’s security forces. The US Government Accountability Office reported in March that between 12 percent and 41 percent of Afghan National Police recruits (depending on the training center where the survey was conducted) suffered from drug addiction. Pointing to those findings at the June 21 news conference, the UN’s Deputy Special Representative Robert Watkins said drug use among police is a threat to the safety and security of the entire nation.

The UNODC survey also revealed the shocking statistic that as many as 50 percent of drug users provide opium to their children. In Afghanistan, raw opium paste is traditionally used to calm children, or, given the widespread lack of access to healthcare, as a pain reliever. Myriad social and economic problems – including unemployment, poverty and the general stress of over three decades of near-constant warfare – are believed to be spurring drug use among adults.

Experts say that difficulties surveying the habits and attitudes of Afghan women mean the drug-use figures, already double the global average, are likely much higher than what the survey’s findings indicate. Women comprised only 3 percent of the survey sample of over 5,000. Traditional opium-use patterns suggest there could be wide prevalence of drug use among women, pushing the nationwide figures higher.

The UNODC survey did not examine drug use among children. But an earlier study, commissioned by the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Department (INL), found an “alarming trend” of addiction to opium among younger children. “Children of nine, 14 months, and between two and four years” are addicted, the INL’s Thom Browne said during a visit to Afghanistan earlier in June. “This is the youngest age group exposed to drugs that we have seen worldwide. It has never been reported before.”

According to the survey, only 10 percent of Afghanistan’s drug users have received some treatment, though 90 percent have expressed a wish for it. “The treatment gap is enormous,” said Sarah Waller, a drug demand reduction consultant with the UNODC. Waller pointed out that drug demand reduction needs to treat not just the medical addiction, but also mental health issues.
Remedies are limited. There are few treatment centers, creating a “huge deficit,” the UN’s Watkins said. Centers for women and children are even scarcer.

Despite considerable funding of counter-narcotics programs, most attention has focused on the reduction of opium production and export. Programs for reducing drug dependency are severely under-funded.