OPIUM TAKE OVER
White Girl. Snow. Boy. Black Tar. Smack. Skunk. No matter what you call it, Heroin is feasting its carnivorous addiction one family on this planet at a time. Rapidly drying out the vein that keeps the blood flow of a family vibrant and replacing it with complete misery. There are over 13.5 million people around the globe who use opiates. Half of this number is said to represent those who are hard-core addicted. Why is this number so high? Because not only are teenagers and adults becoming hooked on the pain-relieving drug but so are children as young as 18 months.
An estimated 2 million Americans are currently addicted to heroin. The drug swallowed them whole. Nothing will and can make them give up the drug. Not the police and their laws. Not social services and losing the right to be mothers and fathers to their children. Not getting fired and living on the streets. Not nothing. The epidemic has grown rapidly over the last decade and you would have assumed it should have slowed down now. I mean didn’t we find out heroin was a no-no in the 80s? But nonetheless, more and more people are becoming affected by the zombie disease.
Places like Baltimore, Maryland, Fresno, California, Portland, Organ, and Washington, D.C. have had a major jump in junkies roaming their streets in the last two years. Fresno, California has become the Mecca for users and dealers. With its geological location being ideal for traffickers, many have set up shop and made Fresno its trap house. With a study done last year, Fresno had the highest number of druggies and drugs coming out of its rural area. The fact that everything is so spread out in an almost pure farm community, there was plenty of room to cook and be cooked without the F.E.D.S catching you. Of course, these drugs come up through Mexico, but where on earth is Mexico getting heroin and opium from?
Good old America has a billion-dollar three-some going on with Mexico and Afghanistan. Though Mexico does grow a large amount of opium every year, Afghanistan is the one that needs to be thanked for America's drug issue. This Middle Eastern country, in 2007, had poppy cultivation worth $4 billion dollars a year. There are 3.3 million people involved in the production of opium. 3 quarters of the annual profit went to traffickers while the other quarter was shared amongst the farmers. Since 2007, Afghanistan has managed to average a 50% increase every year in the production of opium and has been producing at least 92% of the world's supply of opium. So it would be no surprise that in 2011, 7,000 tons of Afghan opium were utilized. 3,400 tons were consumed or trafficked as raw opium. 467 tons were manufactured as heroin. In 2012 that number rose to $30 billion dollars. It is and has been the largest export and import they have to offer.
Between 2007 and 2010 the government tried to put a major stop to this business. The Afghani government, with help from narcotic officials from the UN and Russia, helped burn and destroy thousands of acres of poppy farms. In Jalalabad, in 2007, they managed to destroy 2,055 pounds of high-quality heroin and 345 pounds of opium with a street value of $250 million US dollars. Even in recent news, the Police in Zehri, a district of Kandahar in Afghanistan, stopped passengers on a highway. For what you may ask? To help destroy poppy fields. They were forced to get out of their vehicles and disregard anything they had planned that day in order to start pulling up poppy plants from along the side of the highway. Those who refused to do it, pretty much got their ass beat. But those aren’t the only people getting their ass beat during this time.
Farmers who have had their farms burned and destroyed also are up for an ass whooping. This comes from having been paid upfront by big-time traffickers. And now since the farmers have nothing to show in return they have three options. One, pay the money back. Two, get killed. Three, give their daughter up. Nine times out of ten, the money is spent. So now they’re left with two options. The man must give himself up to be killed and leave his wife and 7 kids behind or give up his youngest daughter. Would you believe that they give their youngest up? Cause that's what happens.
With the country that produces the highest amount of opium, I guess it’s safe to say they have the highest number of addicts. Nearly 3 million addicts to date. With so much income flowing through the country, you would think poverty wouldn’t be their current demise. The people of the war-stricken country have turned to opium and heroin for comfort. 25% of all household families are addicted and that would include the women and children.
It’s one thing for an adult to become dependent on these drugs, but a child? How does this come about? Many Afghan children live in houses where the father went away to fight in the war and came back with a problem. So while the father smokes, the child is nearby playing or sleeping and inhales the secondhand smoke. Other times, they have been disabled by the war. Whether a bomb dropped on their homes and caused them to lose a leg, arm, or ear or they have a stomach flu, their parents are too poor to take them to a hospital, which in most cases is hundreds of miles away. They just can’t afford it, so to stop their children’s pain, they feed them opium. Their mothers may give it to them so they won’t be so needed while they work in a field or as a prostitute. One of the biggest reasons poor Afghan parents give their children opium is to stop their hunger pains. There is no money to buy food for the whole family. They normally eat some type of stale bread and potato when they can and to stop the growling of the stomach, they pass the opium pipe around. Opium is much cheaper than food in this country. That’s why it’s used as a nutrition substitute.
A lot of times you will see families addicted to opium pushing their young children in the street to feed themselves. Some go work in sweatshops for extremely low wages to support their families' addiction. They are even forced to beg on the street day after day. Many families involve both their young girls and boys in street prostitution. Many will sell their children into the sex trade without thinking twice. This usually results in the kid being transported to another country and never being seen again—all of this being done in the name of opium.
Once a mother gives their child opium, she will have to continue feeding them their addiction. You now see more and more rehab centers for children 3-12 years old in Afghanistan. When they first arrive there, they appear ghostly white with bad hygiene. They suffer from chills, headaches, diarrhea, and even constipation while first going through detox. These facilities are almost as poor as the people coming there for help, so there is no medication to stop the pain. These kids are forced to quit cold turkey. For those who come down with hypothermia, a cold shower is all they can provide to ease the pain.
Many times rehab is really a waste of time. These kids just go back home and become zombies again. They are the only ones clean when they are welcomed back home so naturally, they will fall back into the death trap they left. Over 5,000 opium-related deaths occur every year in Afghanistan. Over 9,000 accidents have occurred due to opium-addicted children.
With 13.5 million people worldwide taking opiates, there doesn’t seem to be a blue sky or blue vein in sight. Will this world eventually be inhabited by nothing but addicts or people who can’t solely live off the high of life? Will society one day accept this drug and its evil ways? Let's hope the government and people affected by this drug get some control over it. Let's pray this happens before it ultimately seeps into our future. Our children.
