Lisa Schlein VOA News June 22, 2017 GENEVA — The United Nations reports about 250 million people, or 5 percent of the global adult population, used drugs in 2015, and of those, about 29.5 million suffered from drug-use disorders, including addiction. The World Drug Report 2017 launched Thursday by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said
VOA News May 16, 2017 WASHINGTON — The world’s number one opium-producing country, Afghanistan, is braced for an exploding poppy harvest this year, as farmers are cultivating the illicit crop in areas where it has never grown before. “Unfortunately, the narcotics production is on the rise this year,” Javed Qaem, Afghan deputy counternarcotics minister, told international
VOA News April 4, 2017 KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — An Afghan official says that in the past 12 months the country’s counter-narcotics department has seized almost 650 tons of contraband drugs and alcohol. Gen. Baz Mohammad Ahmadi, deputy interior minister for the counter-narcotics police, says the confiscated drugs include raw opium, heroin and hashish. He says that
CNBC: Last week, Afghanistan released new data showing opium production is surging, information that dovetailed with a widely circulated 2016 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report that showed similar findings. The primary problem is a new strain of genetically modified seed that comes from China, which allows poppies to be grown year round.
AA: Illegal poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has surged by 10 percent, the country’s Counter-Narcotics Ministry said Saturday. Ministry spokesman Mohammad Hanif told reporters in Kabul that besides the traditional areas of poppy cultivation in the country’s south and southwest, the northern province of Badghes has fueled much of this year’s surge in illegal poppy cultivation. Click
Tolo News: A number of drug addicts hospitalized in the Phoenix drug rehabilitation center in Kabul have escaped over what they said was an uncertain future and because of their treatment at the institution. Sediqa is the mother of four children who is spending devastating life under the Pul-e-Sukhta bridge in the nation’s capital Kabul, has
Interview Press TV February 13, 2017 Under the pretext of chasing al-Qaeda operatives implicated in the 9/11 attacks on US soil, American forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The continued military operation has caused heavy casualties, but US officials claim they are fighting al-Qaeda, the Taliban and most recently Daesh terrorists in the Asian nation. Press
RFE/RL’s Tajik Service January 12, 2017 DUSHANBE — The Tajik Foreign Ministry says that it summoned the Afghan ambassador in Dushanbe late in December and lodged a diplomatic protest over remarks made by the Afghan ambassador to Russia. The ministry said on January 12 that a protest note was handed to the Afghan ambassador in
Tolo News: Drug addicts living under the Pul-e-Sukhta Bridge in Kabul city said on average two to four fellow addicts are dying each day due to the severe cold currently gripping the capital. The Pul-e-Sukhta Bridge is a well-known location for homeless addicts, who also live there with their families. According to one addict, Rahman, between
Tolo News: Afghanistan’s ministry of counter-narcotics Tuesday said that over a million young Afghan male and female youths are drug addicts. The total number of addicts in the country is estimated to be about 3.5 million and three percent of them constitute women, said the minister of counter-narcotics Salamat Azimi. Click here to read more (external