People associate Afghanistan with the Taliban, Al Qaida, and thirty years of war and a host of other problems but child drug addicts is not one of them and it’s growing. While billions of dollars in aid has poured into the country thanks to a corrupt government very little reaches the impoverished areas outside of the capital Kabul leaving large segments of its poverty stricken population to fend for its self. With little economic means to provide for their basic needs families with children often turn to the one thing that is cheap and easily obtained in Afghanistan opium as it helps to elevate the pains of hunger but creating drug addicts in the process.
Despite the scale of the problem, little help is available to Afghanistan's child addicts and no UK aid goes to child rehab programmes. In fact, the Islamic taboo on drugs means that outreach workers face hostility and even violence.
"When kids are testing positive like this, then there has to be a serious problem," said Thom Browne of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), describing the pressure that program staff are under to conduct studies even as they treat patients.
Some children are admitted with latent drug levels as much as 15 times higher than that of heroin users in the United States, Browne said, blaming the purity of Afghan poppy products and a high tolerance developed though protracted inhalation indoors.
"We don't know the long-term effects of this on the kids' brains, their development, their emotions. It looks like there's a can of worms here -- not just in the high addiction rate, but in the level of addiction," he said.
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