Afghan Women Addicts on the Rise

TOLOnews.com

A leading drug addiction treatment center says that the rising number of drug-addicted men is a key driver behind the growing numbers of drug-addicted women. The addiction treatment group Nejat Center, which hosts a number of rehabilitation homes and programmes including in Kabul and Jalalabad, said more than 700 women were undergoing treatment through Nejat now, and the numbers are increasing. By passing their addiction on to their wives, men are also passing it on to their children, according to the Center's experience. The Nejat Center called for the government to give the matter more serious attention to address the ever-growing problem. "We much try to decrease the total number of addicted people, but we have fewer and fewer possibilities," Nejat director of harm reduction for women Mohammed Amman Raoufi said, adding that the poor who are returning from regional countries are more likely to be addicts. "Those who are traveling to Iran and Pakistan, they often come back as addicts further adding to the increase of addicts in the country." Raoufi said many of the women undergoing treatment said they became addicts when their spouses returned from neighbouring countries which they went to for work. A woman, who requested anonymity, in prison for her addiction said: "My spouse went for work [outside Afghanistan] and when he came back, he was addicted. Then I also started to smoke opium and I gave it to the children too. If I don't smoke my body is painful." Raoufi suggested that because many women in lower-income families are doing onerous work, they use opium to "medicate" against the fatigue and pain, before passing it on to their children. Afghanistan is the source of about 90 percent of world's opium, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The UNODC estimates about 1.5 million Afghans use drugs Afghanistan. While there are no clear statistics on the gender breakdown of this estimate, in 2009 the UNODC said at least 110,600 women used some form of illegal drugs.