Opium has penetrated deeply into the Afghan society. Afghan youths are increasingly going astray by becoming addicted to drugs at a time when they should be getting education or contributing to their country's reconstruction. Every year thousands of deaths are caused in Afghanistan due to consumption of drugs. The drug from Afghanistan flows into many other countries of world where it causes further destruction to humanity.
No national, regional or global solution seems to be working. The menace from drugs is far great to Afghanistan itself than any country of the world. Unfortunately, the Afghan government seems to be neglecting the widely spread drug trafficking which is causing catastrophic loss not to Afghanistan but to the whole world.
Today thousands of Afghans including women and children are busy ruining their lives by drug addiction. Taking opium to kill pain is an old tradition in the villages of Afghanistan. At present, for many people it is a preferable medicine. Astonishing fact about this tradition is that opium is also given to children and women while in pain regardless of worries about them getting addicted to it.
According to government statistics the number of addict people in the country is now above one and half million. In Afghanistan, normally, the addiction of women to tobacco or opium has been quite uncommon. But opium and other forms of poppy are widely and easily available with cheap price. This has made women and children more vulnerable to addiction. In a country where more than 90 percent of world's opium is produced, such annoying trends are not beyond expectations.
The beneficiaries of all the Afghan opium circling around the world are the drug traffickers and the Taliban. Taliban are believed to be funding their operations majorly from the opium business and for this purpose they encourage the famers by whatsoever means possible to them to cultivate poppy in the fields.
Recently the government has talked about decrement of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. There is zero poppy cultivation in a major number of provinces. This applies to the peaceful province only as in the insecure regions of Afghanistan, poppy is still cultivated with no fear and worries. Even if the graph of poppy production goes drastically down, the Afghan society will remain deeply impacted.
Afghan drug production is killing the Afghans themselves. It is the obligation of the government to take more serious and responsible measures to tackle the opium so that we can live a life free of drugs.