Despair and poverty fuel drug use in Afghanistan

Drug addiction has long been a problem in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest producer of opium and heroin and now a major source of meth. The ranks of the addicted have been fueled by persistent poverty and by decades of war that left few families unscarred.

Hundreds of men, strung out on heroin, opium, and meth, were strewn over the hillside overlooking Kabul, some in tents, some lying in the dirt. Dogs skulked around because they sometimes give them drugs, and there were bodies of overdosed dogs amid the garbage. Men here as well slip, quiet and alone, across the line from oblivion and despair to death.

It appears to only be getting worse since the country’s economy collapsed after the seizure of power by the Taliban in August last year and the subsequent halt of international financing. Families that were once able to get by found their livelihoods cut off, leaving many barely able to afford food. Millions have joined the ranks of the impoverished.

The growing numbers of addicts are found around Kabul, living in parks and sewage drains, under bridges, on open hillsides.

A 2015 survey by the UN estimated that up to 2.3 million people had used drugs that year, which would have amounted to around 5 percent of the population at the time. Now, seven years later, the number is not known, but it’s believed to have only increased, said the head of the Drug Demand Reduction Department, Dr. Zalmel, who like many Afghans uses only one name.

The Taliban, who seized power nearly a year ago, have launched an aggressive campaign to eradicate poppy cultivation. At the same time, they inherited the ousted, internationally backed government’s policy of rounding up addicts and forcing them into camps.