Opium Production in Afghanistan - Drug Trafficking and Impact Around The World

Drug Trafficking and Impact Around The World

According to EU agencies, Afghanistan has been Europe’s main heroin supplier for more than 10 years. Heroin enters Europe primarily by two major land routes: the long-standing ‘Balkan route’ through Turkey; and, since the mid-1990s, the ‘northern route’, which leaves northern Afghanistan through Central Asia and on to Russia (and is sometimes colloquially referred to as the ‘silk route’). Estimated number of problem opioids users in EU: 1.5 million (1.3–1.7 million), average prevalence between 4 and 5 cases per 1,000 adult population (aged 15–64). In 2005 there were around 7,000 acute drug deaths, with opioids being found in around 70% of them. There was a minimum of 49,000 seizures resulting in the interception of an estimated 19.4 tonnes of heroin. Countries reporting the largest number of seizures (descending order): UK (2005), Spain, Germany, Greece, France. Countries reporting the largest quantities of heroin seized in 2005 (descending order): Turkey, UK, Italy, France, the Netherlands.

In 2010, Russia accused United States of supporting the opium production in Afghanistan. Presently with resurgence of high output production of opium and heroin in post-Taliban Afghanistan, there is an ongoing heroin addiction epidemic in Russia which is claiming 30,000 lives each year, mostly among young people. There were two and half million heroin addicts in Russia by 2009.

Read more about this topic:  Opium Production In Afghanistan

Famous quotes containing the words the world, drug, impact and/or world:

    Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.
    Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

    Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.
    Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)

    As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.
    Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)

    We are the sons and daughters of the world they saved. [Now is our moment] to make common cause with other countries to ensure a world of peace and prosperity for yet another generation.
    Bill Clinton (b. 1946)