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2022-07-25 Afghanistan
Despair and poverty increase drug use in Afghanistan
[Aljazeera] Drug addiction has long been a problem in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest producer of opium and heroin and now a chief source of methamphetamine.

Drug use has been driven by persistent poverty and decades of war that left few families unscarred.

It appears to be getting worse since the country’s economy collapsed following the seizure of power by the Taliban in August 2021 and the subsequent halt of international financing.

Families once able to get by found their sources of income cut off, leaving many barely able to afford food. Millions have joined the ranks of the impoverished.

Drug users can be found around the capital, Kabul, living in parks and sewage drains, under bridges and on open hillsides.

A 2015 survey by the United Nations estimated that up to 2.3 million people had used drugs that year, which would have amounted to about 5 percent of the population at the time.

Seven years later, the number is not known, but it is believed to have only increased, according to Dr Zalmel, the head of the Drug Demand Reduction Department, who like many Afghans, uses only one name.

The Taliban has launched an aggressive campaign to eradicate poppy cultivation. At the same time, they inherited the deposed, internationally-backed government’s policy of forcing drug users into camps.

Earlier this summer, Taliban fighters stormed two areas frequented by drug users, one on the hillside and another under a bridge.

They collected about 1,500 people, officials said. They were taken to the Avicenna Medical Hospital for Drug Treatment, a former United States military base. It is the largest of several treatment camps around Kabul.

Posted by Besoeker 2022-07-25 03:23|| || Front Page|| [11127 views ]  Top

#1 I blame Genetic Drift.
Posted by Besoeker 2022-07-25 06:55||   2022-07-25 06:55|| Front Page Top

#2 fighters stormed two areas frequented by drug users, one on the hillside and another under a bridge.

We were once adrenaline junkies.
Man meat eating Mohammed monkeys.
But there's no fight anymore!
Even the 'occupiers' of yore
have left with all their flunkies.
And now we just police...
[gives kick in druggies ass]
this here land o' lunkeys!
Posted by Dron66046 2022-07-25 07:16||   2022-07-25 07:16|| Front Page Top

#3 "Just say 'NO'!"
Posted by Frank G 2022-07-25 08:36||   2022-07-25 08:36|| Front Page Top

#4 They thought it was OK with Allan if they grew opium for export to the infidels but somehow acquired a taste for it themselves. Kinda like the kid who gets burned playing with matches. Too bad.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-07-25 12:34||   2022-07-25 12:34|| Front Page Top

#5 Living in Afghanistan at any time would be enough to turn too drugs.
Posted by Chris 2022-07-25 13:43||   2022-07-25 13:43|| Front Page Top

#6 ^ Exactly. You can almost taste the despair. And under a regime like talibaners, it is worse. Women sometimes kills their newborns out of mercy.
Posted by Dron66046 2022-07-25 15:03||   2022-07-25 15:03|| Front Page Top

#7 Well, we have the same bullshit here except before they are born.
Posted by Chris 2022-07-25 15:44||   2022-07-25 15:44|| Front Page Top

#8 Despair and poverty also increase drug use in Nevada.
Posted by Secret Master  2022-07-25 16:35||   2022-07-25 16:35|| Front Page Top

#9 It’s my understanding that opium kills hunger pains…
Posted by trailing wife 2022-07-25 16:39||   2022-07-25 16:39|| Front Page Top

01:46 Grom the Affective
01:33 Besoeker
01:22 Besoeker
00:59 Besoeker
00:48 Besoeker
00:40 Frank G









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