Afghanistan has been the largest opium producer in the world and more than 90 percent of the global supply has come from the country in the last decade.
As per the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) research, Afghanistan's opium production grew 7 percent in 2011 from a year before due to increase in price and worsening security.
On the same lines, the consumption of opium in Afghanistan has also increased frantically. Reuters said in a report that, according to the UNODC, Afghanistan has around one million heroin and opium addicts out of a population of 30 million, making it the world's top user per capita.
The worst is that even women and children in rural areas of Afghanistan consume opium on a regular basis to cure their illnesses. The Afghans believe that opium has curative powers.
This practice has affected the lives of women in the backward country. The UN-funded Nejat drug rehabilitation center recently estimated that around 60,000 women in Afghanistan regularly take illegal drugs, including hashish and marijuana.
The National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) informed told Reuters that it wanted to roll out methadone to drug addicts as an option to treatment, but the Ministry of Counter-narcotics objected the project, saying it would introduce yet another narcotic onto the black market.
Click Start to have a look at pictures of of Afghani women addicted to opium.
An Afghan woman holds up opium as she attends a counseling session at the Nejat drug rehabilitation centre, an organisation funded by the United Nations providing harm reduction and HIV/AIDS awareness, in Kabul.ReutersA drug addict covers her son as she prepares to leave the Nejat drug rehabilitation centre, an organisation funded by the United Nations providing harm reduction and HIV/AIDS awareness, in Kabul.ReutersDrug addicts visit the Nejat drug rehabilitation centre, an organisation funded by the United Nations providing harm reduction and HIV/AIDS awareness, in Kabul.ReutersNaik Bakhat, a 35-year-old mother of four, smokes opium in her house in the Eshkashem district of Badakhshan province, northeast of Kabul.ReutersNaik Bakhat, a 35-year-old woman, relaxes after smoking opium in the Eshkashem district of Badakhshan province, northeast of Kabul.ReutersNaik Bakhat (L), a 35-year-old woman, her daughter (C) and her husband Gada Mohammad, who is also addicted to opium, in their house in Eshkashem district of Badakhshan province, northeast of Kabul.ReutersA worker from Medicins Du Monde clinic collects used syringes from under a bridge inhabited by drug addicts in Kabul.ReutersGada Mohammad, an opium addict, shows the opium he consumes in his house in the Eshkashem district of Badakhshan province, northeast of Kabul.ReutersAn Afghan doctor explains the use of condoms to a group of women addicts at a counseling session at the Nejat drug rehabilitation centre, an organisation funded by the United Nations providing harm reduction and HIV/AIDS awareness, in Kabul.ReutersAfghan women work in a poppy field in a village outside Balkh province, about 500 km (miles) north of Kabul.ReutersAn Afghan woman prisoner stands in her room at a women's detention centre, during a visit by Yuri Fedotov, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Kabul.Reuters
