‘1 Million Died’ from Afghan Heroin Since ‘War on Terror’

NATO’s Needle War

“Afghan heroin has killed more than 1 million people worldwide since the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ began and over a trillion dollars has been invested into transnational organized crime from drug sales,” said the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov. 

“Any impartial observer must admit the sad fact that the international community has failed to curb heroin production in Afghanistan since the start of NATO’s operation.” Ivanov said at the UN’s 56th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna.

• Opium growth has increased by 18 per cent from 131,000 hectares (ha) to 154,000 [compared with 104,000 ha in 2005 and 7,606 ha in 2001] in the war-torn country, Ivanov told the conference.

• Afghanistan produces about 90 per cent of the world’s opium.

• Opium production in Afghanistan is up from 185 tons a year in 2001, prior to NATO’s invasion, to 5,800 tons in 2012.

• Afghanistan produced about 820 tons of heroin in 2012, said Ivanov in his presentation.

A heroin user injects himself at the derelict former Russian Cultural Center, a haven for drug addicts in Kabul. Photo credit: Peter Nicholls/The Times (UK). Image may be subject to copyright.

Poppy Field in Afghanistan. Image source. Image may be subject to copyright.

Heroin kills more than 30,000 people in Russia every year, and nearly all of the deadly drug comes from Afghanistan, BBC reported Victor Ivanov as saying.

The heroin production in Afghanistan has now developed to a ‘global destabilizing factor,’ especially for Russia, Ivanov has previously stated.

Drug injection is the largest factor for the spread of HIV in the U.S.  A study by the National Institutes of Health found that 27 percent of all injecting drug users are HIV-infected. United States has an estimated 1 million heroin addicts.

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