Pubdate: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON) Copyright: 2010 The Ottawa Citizen Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326 Author: Dan Williams, Reuters SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN More And More Children Are Testing Positive For Opium Addiction In Afghanistan, Some From Second-hand Smoke And Some Because Their Parents Give It To Them, Dan Williams Reports. KABUL Look closer at the drawings on the wall of the Sanga Amaj clinic, and a wrenching motif emerges. One 11-year-old's family tableau shows father and mother huddled over heroin kits as their sons watch helplessly. Another sketch is of smiling youngsters around a poppy plant that has been crossed out in red, like a traffic no-go sign. Taken in sequence, they're an ideal depiction of the recovery that Sanga Amaj, one of three U.S.-funded drug clinics for women and children in Afghanistan, offers in modest measure to the most overlooked and vulnerable of the country's many opiate addicts. While addict babies born to drug-using mothers are familiar in the West, experts say the Afghan phenomenon of parents exposing their young to second-hand opium smoke, or actively encouraging them to partake, is unique and largely unexplored. " 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. "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 (also) in the level of addiction," he said. A low-slung complex of dormitories and workshops on a side road near Kabul University, Sanga Amaj began four years ago as a clinic for female addicts, housing 20 at a time. Their young children were also put up for convenience, but staff immediately noticed that some showed withdrawal symptoms of their own. The 15 boys and girls there range from three to 10 years in age. Seven are healthy, staying while their mothers undergo a 45-day detoxification and re-education course in rooms just across the leafy courtyard. The other eight are in recovery. Parwana is nine, but looks younger, her growth likely stunted by the opium to which she says her widowed mother introduced her and a five-year-old brother who is also in Sanga Amaj. "We came here to be fixed, so that we don't sleep and feel dull all the time," she said through a translator. "Before, I didn't know the enjoyment of life. I was unwilling to eat. I always had headaches. Now I feel like I'm normal." Sanga Amaj and the other clinics provide basic medication for withdrawal symptoms, but, in line with the Afghan stigma on opiate use, they appear to frown on heroin substitutes such as methadone and insist patients go cold turkey. While the relapse rate for those who have undergone addiction therapy is not known, up to a quarter of women return, said Abdul Basir, one of the Afghan co-ordinators at Sanga Amaj. There are fewer child re-admissions, he said. Fewer still would fall back into drug use if their original care were longer. According to Fadilan Abdul Kayong of the Colombo Plan, an international group that advises the Afghan government on narcotics awareness, child addicts need a minimum 90-day care program, double what is now available. As Afghanistan is the No. 1 exporter of opiates, the world's focus is on cracking down on production rather than fighting domestic addiction. Out of 40 rehabilitation clinics in the country, 30 are paid for by the United States, she said. Most are for men and youths, while three new clinics for women and children are under construction. In rural areas, harsh economics can exacerbate the problem. Women eking out a living at carpet weaving have been known to blow opium smoke on babies to keep them calm. The drug also prevents child workers from chafing at long hours on the loom. Shah shrugged off the scale of the challenge, a common response from those working to relieve Afghanistan's war ravages. "I care about the numbers, but I care more about the people," she said. - -------------------- Afghan drug addiction twice global average: UN KABUL Eight per cent of Afghans suffer from drug addiction, a rate twice the global average and a "major" growing problem for the world's leading narcotic producer, a survey warned Monday. Issued by the Afghan government and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the report found around one million people in the country aged 15 to 64 had drug addictions, often to opium and heroin. "After three decades of war-related trauma, unlimited availability of cheap narcotics and limited access to treatment have created a major, and growing, addiction problem in Afghanistan," UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said. The study also found that in the last five years the number of regular opium users had jumped 53 per cent and the number of heroin users doubled as the drug industry boomed. The report added that only 10 per cent of drug users surveyed had received any kind of drug treatment, even though 90 per cent felt they needed it. Drug addiction treatment centres available in 21 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces could provide treatment for only a little more than 10,000 addicts, Ibrahim Azhar, a deputy counter-narcotics minister told reporters. AgenceFrance-Presse - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D