Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Afghan Mothers Use Opium As Surrogate Medicine - Der Spiegel
More and more people in Afghanistan are using opium as a painkiller due to a severe lack of medical supplies in the country. Some mothers are even giving it to their children, much to the concern of the UN.
...
Many of them take opium without knowing about its dangers, smoking the brownish-black substance through a hookah, because there is no medication in the villages. Opium contains morphine, which initially acts as a painkiller. It also contains codeine which suppresses coughs -- something which almost everyone in the valleys, especially children, suffer from due to the harsh winters.
...
Opium consumption has tended to be the exception in Afghanistan until today, despite the fact that the country is the world's leading opium producer, with an output of 6,100 tons last year. The use of intoxicants is prohibited to the deeply religious Afghans, as decreed in the holy Koran. ...
But now, with a series of record harvests, more and more Afghans are falling prey to the drug. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that a million people between the Hindu Kush mountains and the deserts of southern Afghanistan have now become addicted to opium. ...
More and more people in Afghanistan are using opium as a painkiller due to a severe lack of medical supplies in the country. Some mothers are even giving it to their children, much to the concern of the UN.
...
Many of them take opium without knowing about its dangers, smoking the brownish-black substance through a hookah, because there is no medication in the villages. Opium contains morphine, which initially acts as a painkiller. It also contains codeine which suppresses coughs -- something which almost everyone in the valleys, especially children, suffer from due to the harsh winters.
...
Opium consumption has tended to be the exception in Afghanistan until today, despite the fact that the country is the world's leading opium producer, with an output of 6,100 tons last year. The use of intoxicants is prohibited to the deeply religious Afghans, as decreed in the holy Koran. ...
But now, with a series of record harvests, more and more Afghans are falling prey to the drug. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that a million people between the Hindu Kush mountains and the deserts of southern Afghanistan have now become addicted to opium. ...
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