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world>s opium production)
• Afghan drug problem is by definition a
cross-border phenomenon: global profits of
Afghan opiates per year= USD 67 billion (7
billion Opium trade and 60 billion Heroin
trade).
• Each year about 210 million people use
illicit substances and each year drugs cause
some 200,000 deaths (half from Afghan
Opiates).
• Afghan opium claims about 100,000 lives
annually.Afghan opiates inRussia alone: yearly
about 30,000 youngsters die of heroin overdose
(compared to the 15,000-17,000 Russians who
perished during the Afghan war).
The bitter realities revealed in Iranreview.
org interview with Najibullah Lafraie, the
former Minister of State in Afghanistan, and
a lecturer in political studies at the University
of New Zealand,
4
clearly indicate that some
of the countries, despite having thousands of
military forces inAfghanistan, not only failed
to fulfill their international commitments, but
also encouraged illicit drug trade.
Q: is it true that theUnitedStates contributed
to the rise of the cultivation and production
of narcotics and drugs in Afghanistan since
2001? ......
And according to the 2013 Afghanistan
OpiumSurvey released by the United Nations,
the cultivation of poppy across the country
rose 36% last year. Would you please expand
more on that?
A: When I was in Kabul in late 2006 and
early 2007, there were allegations-sometimes
by high-level government officials-that the
foreign troops were directly involved in the
smuggling of narcotics. There is no clear
evidence of that, but it cannot be ruled out
either.What is clear is the fact that the U.S. and
its allies failed to come up with a well defined,
long term, anti-drug strategy; and their ad hoc
and contradictory policies contributed to the
rise of narcotic production…..
Before 2001 opium was cultivated in 13
provinces of Afghanistan, by 2006 it was
cultivated in 30 provinces!
A comparison of the figures related to
social and health problems caused by drug
abuse including, committing crimes and
psychological problems in UNODC report
of 2014, released 3 years after the above
mentioned report, clearly shows that how the
Human Right response to this problem has
seriously threatened the health and security of
international community.
Drug use and its health and social
consequences Drug use continues to exact a
significant toll, with valuable human lives
and productive years of many persons being
lost. An estimated 183,000 (range: 95,000-
226,000) drug-related deaths were reported in
2012. That figure corresponds to a mortality
rate of 40.0 (range: 20.8-49.3) deaths per
million among the population aged 15-64.
While that estimate is lower than for 2011,
the reduction can be ascribed to the lower
number of deaths reported in a few countries
in Asia. Globally, it is estimated that in 2012,
between 162 million and 324 million people,
corresponding to between 3.5 per cent and 7.0
per cent of the world population aged 15-64,
had used an illicit drug -mainly a substance
belonging to the cannabis, opioid, cocaine or
amphetamine-type stimulants group- at least
once in the previous year.
The extent of problem drug use -by regular
drug users and those with drug use disorders
or dependence- remains stable at between 16
million and 39 million people. However, there
continues to be a gap in service provision, as
in recent years, only one in six problem drug
users globally have had access to or received
drug dependence treatment services each year.
Although the general public may perceive
cannabis to be the least harmful illicit drug,
there has been a noticeable increase in the
number of persons seeking treatment for
cannabis use disorders over the past decade,
particularly in the Americas, Oceania and
Europe. Nonetheless, opiates remained the
most prevalent primary drug of abuse among
those seeking treatment inAsia and in Europe,
as did cocaine in the Americas.
With regard to injecting drug use, the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC), the Joint United Nations Program
on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the World Bank
and the World Health Organization (WHO),
drawing on the most recent data available,
jointly estimate that the number of people who
inject drugs is 12.7 million (range: 8.9 million-
22.4 million). That corresponds to a prevalence
of 0.27 per cent (range: 0.19-0.48 per cent) of
the population aged 15-64.2 The problem is
particularly stark in Eastern and South-Eastern
Europe, where the rate of injecting drug use is
4.6 times higher than the global average.
5
4-ht tp: / /www. i ranrevi ew.
org/content /Document s /US-
Troops-Surge-in-Afghanistan-
R e p e t i t i o n - o f - M i s t a k e -
Committed-in-Iraq.htm
5-World Drug Report 2014,
YuryFedotov, Executive Director,
United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime